


Indelible

by laireshi



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Consent issues due to memory loss later on, Harm to Children, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Memory Loss, Mindwiping, Self-Harm, Twincest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-24
Updated: 2019-12-01
Packaged: 2020-09-25 20:37:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20377747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laireshi/pseuds/laireshi
Summary: Plagued by guilt after killing his brother on Mallet Island, Dante doesn't know how to deal with his nightmares. Eventually, he finds an easy solution: he should just forget that Vergil had ever existed.Unsurprisingly, it doesn't solve any problems, and might have only created more—especially when a human called V knocks on his door.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks for betaing and brainstorming to [vorokis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vorokis/) <3 This fic also wouldn't have happened without the wonderful people of the Spardacest Discord, thank you all!

Dante had never before so much as _asked_ any demon for anything, but now he's begging; desperate, broken by his own sins, unable to see another way out.

"Take them," he implores. He'd kneel if the demon asked, he'd do anything to have it say _yes_. "Take them all."

"A most intriguing offer, Son of Sparda." The demon is a shapeless, blood-coloured blob. It kept still when Dante first started speaking, but now it extends parts of its body towards Dante. He shudders when he's hit with its mental presence coiling around his head, cold and intruding. He doesn't fight it: this is what he wants.

"Will you do it?" Dante knows he sounds pathetic; he doesn't care anymore.

He's not ready for the demon to _morph_ and greet him with Vergil's mocking smile. "Foolishness, Dante. Do you really think it'll work?" it hisses in the perfect approximation of Vergil's voice.

_Of course_ it's perfect: it's taking its form straight from Dante's own memories.

Dante bites on his tongue until he tastes his own blood. He'd been sure the demon would jump at his offer (demand, request, _plea_). Why is it asking him questions? Either it'll do what he needs it to do, or Dante will just collapse here, wait for the next predator to stumble over his body and maybe, hopefully, finally, put an end to his mess of an existence.

In front of him, the demon—Vergil—changes once more. His face grows several shades paler until it's almost grey. Scars appear over his skin, reminiscent of cracks, as if he'd shatter into a million pieces if hurt (as if he'd already shattered and was put back together all wrong). His eyes, bright blue like Dante's own, turn red.

And, at last, a gaping wound opens in his chest, as if he was stabbed with a long sword; blood running down his clothes. Dante had never seen him quite like that in reality: he was wearing an armour at the time, not his own coat and vest. The sight is still familiar, though, pulled out of his nightmares.

"Just make it stop," Dante whispers.

"I can't fight you," it says in Vergil's voice, so very jarring. Vergil would never say that. "I know you call yourself a _Demon Hunter_. I'll do it for you, and you will let me live."

"Deal," Dante promises immediately. _Make me the king of the demon world_, the demon could've said, and Dante would've complied without protests.

Anything to make it better. _Anything._

"So be it, Son of Sparda. Live and forget that your soul was shared with another, once." The demon, still wearing Vergil's skin, approaches him, puts his hands on Dante's shoulders in a way that is too familiar, and then it leans in and kisses him.

Dante's world falls out from under his feet.

***

At the prime age of six years old, Dante doesn't completely comprehend what it means that his father is the _Legendary Dark Knight Sparda_. For him it's the man who holds his hand when he's scared, who teaches him and Vergil to fight with safe wooden swords; not a legend: very much just a part of his day-to-day life, a man like any other, exceptional, of course, but only by virtue of being Dante's father.

He definitely doesn't understand what it means when his father kneels in front of them, pulling them both into an embrace before moving back.

"Vergil, Dante. I want to say I hope that a day will never come when you need those, but I'm not a foolish man. I do hope I'll prepare you for it, though."

Dante looks at him with confusion. He's tired, woken up early, and his father's serious tone of voice worries him. He stays silent, instead opting to do what he always does when he's uncertain of anything: he reaches for Vergil's hand. Vergil humours him and laces their fingers together.

"What is it, father?" he asks politely.

Sparda _sighs_ heavily. Dante had never heard him sigh before.

There's a flicker of something in the air, some kind of power that's unlike their mother's magic but not any less potent. Something deep inside Dante stirs at the sensation, and his father turns to him sharply.

"It's all right, boys," he says. "You'll never truly be alone: you have each other. I know you'll protect each other. But these will help."

That's when Dante sees: there are now two swords in his father's hands. They couldn't be any more different from each other. One is a giant longsword almost two times bigger than Dante; it's not sheathed, and there's a skull near the hilt. It looks powerful, dangerous. The other is a sleek, beautiful thing hidden in an elegant dark blue scabbard like it's too sharp to just keep loose.

His eyes go back to the long sword, as if it's pulling him by some invisible force. It seems strong. It's so big that it has to be. It demands respect by its form alone and it promises that, with it, Dante will be able to kill his enemies.

Next to him, Vergil, for once less composed or less patient, reaches for the sleek sword, a look of fascination on his face.

Their father chuckles. "I had assumed you'd choose like this."

"Are they for us?" Dante asks excitedly.

"Yes."

Dante jumps up happily. His father sets the long sword down, holds the other one with both his hands, the sword lying flatly over his palms, and offers it to Vergil. "Vergil, meet the Yamato. She's yours."

Dante knows he'll never forget the look of delight on his brother's face when he touches the sword, carefully, reverently even. He doesn't try to unsheathe it, just runs his fingers over the scabbard like he's touching something precious.

"And you, Dante." His father puts the long sword on the ground in front of him. "The Rebellion is yours."

Dante immediately tries to lift it, but the sword is too heavy. His arms shake with the exertion.

And then there's a whisper at the back of his mind, a promise of strength, a feeling of belonging, and a quiet _not yet_.

Dante's never been a patient child. Why is Vergil allowed to hold his sword and Dante, not?

He takes a deep breath and tries again, with all his might, to lift the sword. He manages a few centimetres and lets out a triumphant shout—

His father puts his hand flat against the blade and pushes it down.

"You have to grow older and stronger before you can use it." He glances at Dante's expression and adds, "Both of you."

Vergil, who's leant the Yamato against himself—and Dante's glad to see he _isn't_ strong enough to actually wield her, either—protests. "I'm older!"

Dante doesn't remember his father's reply. He does remember they had chocolate cake later that evening, the swords tucked safely in their bedroom, a treat they can only admire and not use.

(He's six when his father gives him two swords _so that you can protect yourself, Dante, if you ever are on your own_.

He loves the Rebellion at first sight; its shape and the obvious might it holds. The Yamato leaves him cold. She doesn't whisper to him like the Rebellion does; he knows she hides a truly lethal power that she doesn't want to show him. She's not meant for him.

Foolishness, to think that; his father wouldn't have given him both swords if they weren't to be his.

Later, he has a chocolate cake all to himself, a happy child in his mother's embrace, and yet he devours the cake, completely sure that if he's not fast enough, someone will take his part—

—disappointed when no one does, like there's something vital missing from his life.)

***

"_Vergil_!"

Dante doesn't know it yet, but his mother's desperate yell of his twin's name will be the last time he ever hears her voice.

He stands inside the closet, terrified, choking on the smoke; vibrating with the urge to go look for Vergil and too much of a coward to step outside. It's okay, though; Mother will surely find him and return soon.

But time passes—Dante can't tell how much. It feels like hours. He only dares step outside when the fire's long died down and Mother _hasn't_ returned. He takes the Rebellion, dragging it behind him because he can still barely lift it. He runs through the empty, charred corridors, screaming both for her and Vergil, until his throat hurts, until he stumbles—

And finds his mother.

She's lying on the floor, twisted at an unnatural angle in the midst of a puddle of blood. Her eyes are open, but unseeing, her hand outstretched.

The Rebellion falls out of his hands with a dull thud. Tears stream down his face, obstructing his vision. He wants to touch her and can't make himself approach all the blood. He throws up, weak and ashamed.

Later, he walks through the rest of the house, slowly, scared of seeing Vergil's dead body too; more scared of not finding him if he's still alive. But Vergil is nowhere to be found, and Dante steps outside, goes through the garden and then the playground—

There's a small body lying there, burnt so much he can't even _recognise_ him, that doesn't even resemble a human being at all, but he knows: he is well and truly alone; for the first time ever, and for the rest of his life.

Vergil was the older one. Why has Dante survived and not him?

(Dante's never truly understood why his mother left him that day, why she didn't hide in the closet with him. She would've survived that way; they would've been safe, Dante wouldn't have to be alone, not ever—

But he was. He's been alone since birth, the kind of loneliness that hides under his bones and runs through his bloodstream; that leaves him frozen, unable to find any warmth that'd make him feel alive again; that doesn't let him sleep because he doesn't want to face the black void that's his soul missing its other part—foolishness, missing something he's never had.

Maybe if his mother loved him enough to stay, it would've been different.)

***

The surprise at seeing Vergil alive, magically, miraculously, impossibly _alive_, never quite goes away. The first meeting hits him as if Vergil had stabbed him with the Yamato instead, and he does, the second time they cross paths. It is still the shock of being near him that sends Dante reeling, though, the pain of the easily-healed wound notwithstanding.

A part of Dante resents him. How dare he come back now, after _a decade_? Why didn't he find Dante sooner? Isn't he his older brother—shouldn't he have found him earlier? They were never supposed to be apart. By now, Dante's long known that his father's words were mistaken at best, a lie at worst. He's been alone for the past ten years. He couldn't bring himself to believe he would never be alone again: he wouldn't survive a loss like that again.

But Vergil keeps walking right back into his life, day after day, for a week, then two.

They fight a lot; Dante usually loses. The Yamato and the Rebellion were given to them so they'd fight with each other, not against, but it doesn't seem to matter anymore. A lot of things don't seem to matter, after their mother's death, and there's very little that feels as right as grinning at Vergil over their crossed blades.

Somehow, it doesn't seem like the playful matches they indulged in as kids with wooden swords and the perspective of going back home to a burning fireplace and an embrace from their mother that was warmer than any fire. No surprise, though; their home is gone and Vergil resembles a stranger more than Dante's twin for all that they are identical—

Except for the burning in Dante's veins, a pull in his bones, like he's a compass and Vergil, his north; something dark rumbling deep in his soul in recognition and the sort of belonging that Dante has no business feeling anymore. He'd never felt that way around Vergil when they were kids—or maybe he did, but it was so natural that he'd never realised it until he lost it.

Dante takes the odd devil-hunting jobs, dispatches of the demons without any issues, goes back to wherever he's spending the night that day; for the last few weeks, that's been when Vergil finds him.

Today is different. Today he stabs the last remaining demon through his chest, mindless of the blood that sprays on him from the wound, and as it turns to ashes on his blade, Dante sees his brother standing there.

"What, isn't it too early for your nighttime visits, Verge?" The nickname irritates Vergil, as Dante well knows, so he refuses to call him anything else.

Vergil looks around with disdain. "I was merely curious as to how my little brother spends his days."

"Like you didn't know." It's Dante who has no idea what his brother is doing, but he firmly tells himself he doesn't care about that.

Vergil shrugs languidly. He steps right into Dante's space, ignoring the sword still clutched in Dante's hand—though the Yamato is tied at his waist, of course, and Dante knows just how fast he can draw it—and runs a hand down Dante's cheek.

It's an innocent touch. Gentle. None of the violence that characterised their previous meetings in it.

It makes Dante shiver.

Vergil grins, too many teeth in his smile for it to seem _nice_. "Look at the mess you made of yourself," he drawls.

The kiss, when it comes, is not really a surprise.

Vergil's body fits perfectly against his, like they were made for each other (but they weren't; they had been meant to be one person and instead got split in two, it only makes sense that together, they're _whole_, matching each other perfectly).

There's an instant when Dante wants to react in his old, childish way—if Vergil wants something, Dante takes it away—but in this case, they both want the same thing, so Dante kisses back almost feverishly. He doesn't really know what he's doing, but he answers to Vergil's movements, pressing his lips back against Vergil's, opening his mouth at his tongue's insistence, moaning at the sensation building low in his belly. Their teeth clash and Vergil snarls and grabs the nape of Dante's neck, angles his head better, nips on his lower lip. Dante clutches at him when he tastes his own blood on Vergil's mouth, wants to chase Vergil's lips and bite him back, but he doesn't let him, kissing down Dante's jaw, then neck.

Desire, excitement, and a touch of fear all mix in Dante when Vergil bites through his neck with teeth that are too sharp, latches on to the wound and drinks his blood.

"You a vampire now?"

Vergil startles. He actually steps back and stares at Dante incredulously for a second before schooling his expression again. "_Oh_, little brother."

Dante's had it with his condescending _older brother_. He lunges at Vergil, aiming to bite him right back, but Vergil laughs at him as he dodges before sliding right back into Dante's space with his inhuman speed. He works his leg between Dante's, and Dante can't really protest when it feels so damn good. He kisses Vergil again, hard, running his hand through Vergil's hair until it falls down Vergil's face and they truly are perfect mirrors of each other.

And then Vergil, the absolute bastard, steps back. "So desperate, brother," he says like he's not out of breath and flushed and less composed than Dante's ever seen him. "See you tonight, then."

"Don't you _dare_."

But Vergil's already gone in a flash of blue light.

(Dante doesn't remember his first kiss.

When he tries to think of it, he gets a bad headache—maybe for the first time in his life. He must've been drunk, he decides, and his body is punishing him with a delayed hangover. The experience probably wasn't anything all that special anyway. In fact, he's not even sure _why_ he assumes the first kiss he remembers wasn't his first ever, but he knows it with a soul-deep conviction.

His second, definitely-not-first kiss isn't anything special either, if he's honest about it. The girl caught his eye because of her ankle-length, deep blue dress—he doesn't even _like_ the colour, but she wears it well; it contrasts nicely against her pale skin and light blonde hair. Later, way past counting which kiss it is, half-naked already, he bares his throat, and she giggles and kisses his Adam's apple.

Dante doesn't know what it was that he was expecting.)

***

Dante at seven years of age knew that he’d never be alone: he had Vergil, after all.

Dante at seventeen years of age knew loneliness all too well, but had his brother back: a stuck-up asshole that he’d never get along with, sure, but his brother all the same. They might fight, but they’d never _fight_ for real.

Dante’s nineteen years old now and he realises he’s a complete _idiot_ who’s never been right about anything when it comes to Vergil.

_He’s better off without a brother like that anyway_.

He’d never thought he’d raise the Rebellion with the intention of _killing_ Vergil, but here he is, doing just that, and he doesn’t waver. He strikes strong and sure, knowing he has to do that, knowing that his father would approve.

And Vergil—

Falls.

It’s like a bucket of icy cold water thrown over Dante or the Yamato piercing through his heart: a wake-up call that’s come too late. His palm stings where Vergil had cut him, but it doesn’t matter. Dante stares into the abyss, dizzy as if it'd been he who’d jumped, and maybe (definitely) it'd have been better that way, but it's too late now: Vergil is gone, choosing hell over Dante.

Choosing death, for no one could survive a fall like that.

He was ready to kill him. This shouldn’t hurt, and yet. Dante stares at Vergil’s blood on the Rebellion and feels nothing but disgust for himself.

He walks down from the tower top, sometimes flying in his devil form: never jumping, never falling himself, not even a few metres, the silhouette of Vergil disappearing into darkness burnt behind his eyelids.

(_Devil May Cry_, the neon sign on Dante's building announces proudly, and he catches himself staring at it in wonder. Another alcohol-influenced decision, that, a cool-sounding slogan that makes no sense whatsoever: Dante has never cried in his life, doesn't really think he's capable of it. He's half-demon and feels less than half human and doesn't value anything enough to cry over it. He should change the name, but somehow it doesn't seem appropriate, like it's an important reminder that he shouldn't discard.

The dirty glove lying on his desk is another one of those. Its palm is cut through, useless as a protection now, and the leather is stiff with dried blood. He should toss it in the trash, but instead he puts it in his lowest drawer. _Sentimentality_, he scoffs at himself, even though the glove doesn't mean anything to him. But a demon had gotten close enough to him to cut him like that, so he deems it a reminder to keep on guard. There’s nothing more to it.

In his dreams, Dante never stops falling.)

***

On Mallet Island, Dante faces the biggest mistake of his life.

Vergil was supposed to be dead. Dante had seen him fall from an impossible height, already injured. He'd mourned him, once he was done cursing him.

He'd been supposed dead for almost ten years now. The other half of Dante's soul, gone: a fate better than the reality with Vergil being so twisted that they no longer fit together into one whole.

His brother bleeds out on his sword, and Dante _hadn't even recognised_ him.

He should've jumped after him when he'd had the chance. Why hadn’t he?

He doesn't cry, not until Vergil disappears, turned into ash and nothingness as if he truly were a demon, and Dante's left with the other half of his amulet that he'd never wanted to have. It was never meant to be his, and its weight on his palm makes everything all undeniably real, more than just a particularly bad nightmare.

(The demon is an eyesore, repulsive to look at, annoying to fight: Mundus' failed experiment of creating Dante's clone, too, almost offending in its form.

Dante feels nothing but grim satisfaction once it finally falls to his blade.

That it turns out to possess the other part of Dante's amulet, stolen from Dante's home during the attack, is a final insult.

Later, back home, he keeps dreaming about the demon knight, unaware why; in the end, he didn't mean anything at all, just Mundus' trick, and not a very good one.

There's no reason for Dante to wake up drenched in sweat and to reach for a bottle of cheap whiskey.)

***

Vergil is everywhere.

(He’s nowhere, dead and gone; only the blood at Dante’s hands remains.)

He’s everywhere, in every reflection, in every glass window and body of water; in every passer-by with bright hair or a dark blue coat making it so that Dante has to force himself to keep going, to avoid hurting an innocent human because they chose the wrong colour to wear. Once, Dante sees a decorative katana in a house he’s supposed to protect and he tears the place to shreds.

Dante rarely sleeps, but the dreams where he falls in Vergil’s place are the good ones.

He drinks; drinks until it stops hurting but it never does, so instead he drinks to forget why it hurts quite so much. When he inevitably drops the bottle to the ground, the alcohol spills in a puddle and Dante’s distorted reflection serves as a reminder, mocking him.

_You’ll never be free of this guilt._

That’s only fair. He doesn’t deserve to be free.

He picks up the broken glass and runs it through the scar on his left hand; over and over again.

(He can handle any Devil Arm just fine, but when one morphs into a katana in his hands, he lets it go as if burnt; destroys it until there's nothing left of the demon's essence. He'd never liked katanas, and come to think of it, he's not even sure what happened to the Yamato, left behind when his childhood home had burnt down. No big loss, in any case; he doesn't think he'd like her very much.

When a blond human man in a dark blue coat walks into his shop, Dante kicks him out before even hearing his case, unsure why.

Dante's tired. He probably works too much.)

***

He doesn't ask Trish about anything; she doesn't volunteer any explanations of her own. He's not sure if she even understands the concept of brothers and even if she does, no one in the world could possibly understand what Vergil means to him.

_Meant_. Before Dante killed him.

A good fight or a night of drinking, and he can go weeks, days, hours—less, always _less_—without the guilt sliding over him like plastic foil, trapping breath in his lungs, constricting his movements until all he can feel is his heart beating wildly in his chest, his brother’s hot, sticky blood on his hands.

He goes on a job with Trish. Wakes impaled on rebar, and she’s standing over him, the demons gone.

“You’re a mess.”

Dante laughs. “You’re only noticing this now?” He slowly pushes himself off the metal bars piercing him until he can stand. The pain doesn’t serve to help him focus, but suddenly, he realises he _needs_ to know.

“Dante—”

“Tell me about him,” he cuts in.

Trish raises one elegant eyebrow. She looks exactly like his mother did, but her expressions are off, emotions flickering on her face that Eva had never shown to him. Her voice is the same, but the words don’t fit. He owes it to her to look past it, but sometimes he can’t, the uncanny valley feeling too overwhelming.

“Our client? Were you drunk enough—”

“_Vergil_,” Dante growls, his voice bearing the dangerous undertones of his demon. He’s not in the mood for her teasing.

And Trish isn’t his mother. Trish is a demon who knows the difference between their strengths.

She takes a step back, as if it’d matter if he attacked her, and she starts talking.

“Vergil was Mundus’ favourite knight: both because he was the strongest and because he was a Son of Sparda. He was thrilled, I believe; considered it his revenge on Sparda. But Vergil, when you met him, no longer knew that. Mundus had stripped him of his identity and his memories. Called him Nelo Angelo.”

If Vergil forgot himself, could Dante be excused for not recognising him?

_No_, an immediate answer, because Vergil _had_ remembered Dante before he’d become a brother-killer.

“Vergil—Nelo Angelo—was his faithful servant. Slave. But Vergil wasn’t . . .” She hesitates.

“_Tell me_.” Dante has to know. He couldn’t have saved Vergil, so the least he can do is to listen to what happened to him, even as he wants to scream with Trish’s every word.

“Mundus knew torture, Dante. I won’t describe it to you. Vergil—he only knelt when Mundus gave him your mother’s amulet back.”

Dante’s eyes flicker to the Devil Sword Sparda at Trish’s back, the amulet encased in it. The last memory of their mother which had apparently stayed with Vergil long past his name did.

“How did he even find him,” Dante growls. Vergil had avoided Mundus for years in the human world, why . . .

“Vergil went into the Underworld himself, Dante.”

_Fell_, Dante corrects, _fell so that he wouldn’t stay with his twin the way they were meant to be_.

“Mundus wasn’t yet fully awakened, but Vergil was hurt, weakened already, he—”

Dante doesn’t hear the rest of the sentence. Red blooms in front of his eyes, blood rushing in his ears, and his demon erupts out of him with a roar when his human side pathetically attempts to hide from his own guilt.

Mundus had been able to torture and enslave Vergil for a decade, because _Dante had hurt him and then had let him fall into hell alone in the first place_. Some brother he is.

Dante doesn’t remember what he does after that or where he goes or what happens to him, just the four words running through his mind: _You did this, Dante._

At some point he turns back human (a wolf in sheep’s skin, Dante is, a monster just waiting for blood). He throws up; he rages; he leaves and goes through a series of bars he doesn't remember; he challenges any demon he finds and none of them can even scratch him; he looks for penance and punishment and finds none for there can be none, not for what he'd done.

The memories never leave him. If anything, they get more vivid than ever: Vergil falling, Nelo Angelo bleeding out; over and over again. Dante hadn't merely killed him, no, first he'd damned him to a decade of torture he can't even imagine.

He shoots himself in the head to make it stop; wakes up in the pool of his own blood, and does it again, and again, and again, and it never works, and it never helps, and he keeps trying anyway.

_This_ is Dante's punishment, he realises at last: living without Vergil, remembering what he'd lost. He deserves it: it's a fate better than Vergil's anyway.

But he can't go on. Vergil looks at him from the mirror every time.

(_Nothing, nothing, nothing_; the last months are a blur but there's nothing of importance and nothing to remember and _Dante is fine, he sleeps at night and he lives his life fully and none of it is a lie_.)

***

When he gets the chance to go to hell, he doesn't hesitate for one second.

He does not find Vergil, because of course he doesn't: he killed his brother, a sin for which he will never be able to repent.

He does, however, find another solution.

Without fear, he walks into the memory demon's lair.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again BIG THANKS to [vorokis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vorokis/) for betaing this! 
> 
> This is where the consent issues tag applies--it's a very minor part of this chapter, but I put a detailed explanation in the end notes.

Dante splashes his face, the remnants of his sleep easily washed away with the water. He's more rested than he remembers being since—he's actually been doing pretty well lately, come to think of it. There's no reason for him to feel this relieved, as if he'd finally slept a full night after months of insomnia. He shakes his head to clear it and runs his hand through his hair, pushing it back.

Someone else looks at him from the reflection in the mirror. There's the strange weight of an unknown name at the tip of Dante's tongue.

His heart drops suddenly and he feels like he's falling; the mirror cuts into his palm as he punches through the glass and the wall behind.

He breathes, heavily, blood dripping from his knuckles even as his flesh is mending back together, leaving his right hand as smooth as ever. Scarless.

And yet he can scar. There’s a big scar with jagged edges on his sternum and a thin scar on his left hand and for a long moment, Dante just stares at it, unable to explain why this old cut, why both of them, has never disappeared, remaining on his body as if they’re supposed to be reminders of something that should be important.

Finally, he shrugs. He gathers the broken shards and throws them into the trash. He tries and fails to go about his day, catching himself staring at the scar on his hand until he grows annoyed at himself and puts gloves on. The scar flares up with sudden pain, and Dante closes his hand into a tight fist and ignores it.

It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing to remember. His memory is perfect.

Trish and Lady visit him in the next few days, both of them visibly worried. He shrugs it off. He’s fine, as always. It’s not like anything _can_ happen to him, anyway.

He tries to sleep, but he can’t, not until he’s too drunk to distinguish between his dreams and the real world.

He’s okay, though. He's only half human: he doesn't need to sleep a lot anyway.

He doesn’t lack his reason for fighting, and breathing, and existing; what a ridiculous concept to even think about.

***

When Dante goes to investigate whatever the hell is going down in Fortuna, he doesn’t expect to run into a kid with silver hair and pale blue eyes that Dante knows all too well from a mirror. 

Even if his arm weren’t fully demon, the kid’s abilities make it obvious that he’s more (less) than human, and Dante snorts at the thought that his father might've had another family at some point. It makes sense if he thinks about it—his father was an old demon and all—though he'd never encountered anyone else called _Son of Sparda_. Then again, Nero’s probably a Grand-repeated-a-few-times-son of Sparda, and that doesn't sound half as well.

For a while, Dante sticks to just watching as the kid runs around. It’s more entertaining than going through waves of demons that couldn’t scratch him even if he stood completely still and let them take their shots. He ascertains that Nero does not, in fact, have any idea about what is really happening in his own town, and it's a relief in a way. Dante wouldn't want to kill family again, when—

He frowns. He doesn’t know where the absurd thought came from. His immediate family is no more, but it wasn’t by his hand that they’d been killed.

Disturbing as the thought is, he’s able to put it out of his mind, and perfect distraction comes in the form of stumbling onto the Yamato, broken in half in the laboratory of some deplorable human not worthy of touching her.

Fortuna is the last place he’d expected to find her and—okay, so maybe that’s down to how Dante’s never liked her and admittedly hadn’t looked for her ever since she disappeared after his childhood home was burnt down. Regardless, to see any blade of his father’s like that is just _wrong_. (A part of him wonders how anyone could have broken the Yamato and he freezes for a second, the answer too terrifying to consider for a reason he doesn’t quite understand.)

He can't retrieve her immediately, but later, when he's in the middle of tearing apart another group of lesser demons, a wave of pure power ripples through him, icy cold like the deepest reaches of hell, carrying with it a promise of sharpness that could cut through the fabric of reality itself. There’s a much weaker aura underneath it that Dante recognises as Nero's, and he chuckles to himself. So he was right about the boy’s lineage.

Next he sees Nero, the kid’s eyes are burning just as cold as the Yamato’s power feels and desire for more power runs scorching hot in his blood. It’s an unsettlingly familiar mix, and when Nero’s demon form manifests, Dante’s momentarily so stunned that he allows Nero to throw him through the wall.

He’s _fought_ someone like that before, he’s certain—

The Yamato cutting through his skin is not a new sensation either, and a part of his demon _welcomes_ it.

It makes no sense. Dante hasn’t seen this sword in decades.

He wins the fight, obviously, but he lets the kid keep the sword for now. He needs her more than Dante does, to save that sweetheart of his, but when the Yamato does finally return to be wielded by his hand, it’s somehow disquieting. 

His left hand hurts as he holds her scabbard, a piercing pain as if someone sliced right through it. The Yamato doesn't sing for him. He doesn't get encouragement and support from her the way he does from the Rebellion. On the contrary, he gets the feeling that the katana is mad at him for some reason.

"Moody, aren't you," he tells her, and the sensation grows tenfold.

He cuts through the hell gate, appreciative of the fact that, yes, the Yamato can truly cut through everything and anything, and then he sheathes her again without a word. The moment he gets the chance to send her to Nero, he does, and when, after the so-called saviour gets defeated, Nero tries to give him the Yamato back, Dante shakes his head.

“Keep her,” he offers easily. “She was my father’s.” The truth, but the words taste odd and sound like a lie. “I won’t use her anyway; she’s not really my style—better you have her.”

Dante might not like the Yamato very much, but she’s a beautiful, powerful weapon. Sparda would’ve wanted her to be used for good, and Dante has no doubts that Nero will do just that.

He doesn’t have the time to train the kid, but whatever; Nero has a good heart, and the Yamato should keep him safe.

Dante goes back home, content. He sends Nero a _Devils Never Cry _sign like a sign of acceptance. He never asks him to visit.

(It’s not at all because something about the kid unnerves him, like seeing a photo of an old friend who died in a terrible accident.)

***

The years go by, and Dante doesn’t know what it is that he’s so desperately missing, as if someone’s cut a hole in his soul and took something crucial away from him, something imperative that made him _Dante_.

He’s being dramatic, he tells himself as he downs another bottle. He can’t recall ever feeling differently, and he can’t miss something he’s never had, can he?

(Later, that night, in a drunken haze, Dante sees a face, the eyes set in it bright blue just like his—but freezing as a winter morning, the man’s lips curling up dangerous like even his smile can cut as sharp as his katana.)

It’s infuriating that years after Mallet Island he still has nightmares about the clone of him that Mundus had created, as if his brain can’t let the idea go: what if he’d gotten his claws on _Dante_ instead, what if somehow he’d been made into a demonic slave with no mind of his own?

Ridiculous, of course. Mundus wasn’t and never would be strong enough to break him. But on the nights when he has dreams like that, he drinks more and more.

He can’t say that he _lives_; he survives.

And then a tall, lean human walks into his office and it’s like Dante’s come awake for the first time in decades.

***

If V had a choice between seeing more of his own nightmares and asking Dante for help, he wouldn't have hesitated for a second. He doesn't have a choice, though, and so he finds himself at the steps to his brother's office.

_Devils Never Cry_, the neon sign announces to the world. _Clearly_, V scoffs at his brother stating the obvious.

Dante's office is a mess, which isn't really surprising, though the amount of empty bottles of human alcohol _is_. What does Dante hope to accomplish with all of it, exactly?

Irrelevant. V is not in the state to take care of his little brother. He needs Dante to defeat the other part of him and that's it.

Talking to Dante like this, in this form, is . . . hard. What little demonic essence V has calls out to him; he can't really believe Dante doesn't feel it—but it's for the better, if he doesn't recognise V. It will make things easier.

(V tells himself it's okay to be mistaken for a human, because it's not a mistake but a simple fact at the moment.)

Dante surprises him, however, in the midst of his explanation. He’d thought Dante, as humanity's self-appointed protector, wouldn't need any convincing at all to go and take care of any demons threatening his beloved human world, but here he is, sprawled on his sofa, refusing to go.

V can give him _some_ truth, he supposes. "This demon is your reason . . . your reason for fighting."

And so much more than V can express in human words, but still remembers feeling back when he was whole.

"This demon got a name?" Dante asks, his interest finally piqued. 

V looks into Dante's painfully familiar, light blue eyes. He needs to see what his little brother truly feels as V says, "_Vergil_."

It’s Dante, so he’s expecting an immediate, distinct reaction. A punch to the face. A disbelieving laughter. Instant denial.

But Dante just looks at him without comprehension or recognition.

Seconds pass. Deep silence. V still waits, and nothing still comes. 

It can't be, he thinks.

For a moment, he entertains the idea that it's not Dante, just a doppelgänger for some reason playing at being his brother . . . But it _is_ Dante, the real one. V knows it deep in his soul, the one he shares with his brother.

Dante turns impatient. "What, that's it? A joke at my name, or?"

V grips his cane's handle hard, leaning more of his weight on it when his knees threaten to buckle underneath him.

Dante acts as if he doesn't know him, but he isn't that good of an actor. It's an honest reaction and one that V is in no way equipped to deal with. His heart spasms painfully in his chest, his lungs threatening to close up. The connection between their souls is _still right there_, but it doesn't serve to steady him. Not at all. He's dizzy with the mix of feeling Dante's very being right next to him and his easy rejection; the terrifyingly sincere lack of recognition in his face.

As if Vergil had never mattered. As if Dante had forgotten him just as easily as Mundus had broken him—

_No_.

No. V can believe many things, but not this. Dante _wouldn't have_ forgotten him, not his own twin, which means that something has happened to him.

_How can he not remember?_

Dante's _strong_; unless he'd stumbled upon ancient powers—and admittedly his little brother might've done just that—nothing should've been able to affect him. There were demons capable of messing with the minds of others, so maybe Dante encountered a strong one. Maybe he'd triggered a curse from the beginning of time. There _must _be an explanation.

If only V still looked like Vergil; faced with his twin and not his meagre shadow, Dante would surely have remembered, no matter the spell placed upon him. 

Again, V tells himself that it’s better Dante doesn't know him. He'd trust a stranger sooner than he'd trust even a part of Vergil; that much, V is certain of.

There must be a way to dispel and undo whatever has been done to Dante (_to rip the person responsible apart_, rumbles something in V that he'd believed he'd lost), but he doesn't have the _time_ to do it now. Defeating his demon is too important. Once he's whole again, Dante will remember, and all will be right again.

First, V needs some way to make Dante go and fight for him. There _is_ another name he'd react to, but V desperately doesn't want to invoke it.

"Well?" Dante sounds vexed now. "See yourself out, if that's all you have to say."

"How foolish of me," V says slowly. "You know him by another name."

Dante looks at him from the sofa, his legs spread, his posture faking comfort, but clearly coiled to strike at any moment. He's blinking too rarely; there's an edge of something inhuman in his smile. V wonders how anyone's fooled into believing Dante is _safe_.

Bile rising up in his throat, his heartbeat too fast and his chest constricting, V speaks, "_Mundus_."

That the name makes Dante act is not a surprise, but he still moves faster than V can see, suddenly pushing him against the wall with a forearm against his neck.

There's something in Dante's eyes: less than the recognition V longs for; more than mere indifference.

A part of V hates his brother for making him call himself that vile name; another focuses on Dante’s touch, how it’s like an electric current running through him, the closeness after years of separation making him shiver. It's good that the touch is ostensibly hostile; V wouldn't know how to deal with anything else. The only times he'd been touched for the last twenty years were with the intention of hurting him.

"_What_ are you?" Dante hisses into his face.

"Nothing more than a human," V tells him. "Unlike you."

Dante couldn't deny it if he tried. His demon is close to the surface and V does still remember the manner demons think in; he's fully aware he looks like prey, a human made more tempting by the weak remnants of a more demonic force in him. The air between them vibrates with Dante's barely controlled power that V refuses to be frightened of even as all his instincts are yelling at him to flee. Dante's eyes glow bright red, promising violence—

Or something else entirely, as Dante crashes his lips against V's.

Little brother doesn't even remember his name, but he does remember who he belongs to. Cold comfort though it might be, V will take it as an apology for now.

He kisses back just as aggressively, digs his cane into Dante's ribs and makes him submit with his teeth on Dante's throat.

Dante goes down easily enough.

***

There is something about this man calling himself V that's almost as familiar as Dante's own reflection. He touched Dante like no one ever had before, like he _knew_ how to make Dante see stars. He looks like he’s about to keel over, but he made Dante _beg _for the first time in his life. (The memory of his first kiss whose face he can't remember comes to mind, for all that Dante's sure the man looked nothing like V does.)

They’re presentable again now, awaiting Trish and Lady’s arrival, and Dante’s doing his best to avoid V as much as possible. He’s not used to any human—anyone, really—having this sort of power over him, and there’s something uncanny, eerie even, about the seemingly frail man with demons at his beck and call. Dante hasn’t _seen_ them, per se, but the aura hiding in V’s tattoos is unmistakable.

Dante’s certain he shouldn’t trust him, and yet, there is something alluring about him, something that makes it impossible for Dante to ignore him and kick him out now that he’s got his mission and his payment.

"Guess what, ladies," Dante says when they come in, smiling like he's smelling blood already. "_Mundus_ is back."

V clearly tenses where he's standing at the wall. Sudden fear goes off him in waves that make Dante’s demon growl in his soul with a protective note he's never felt before. 

Then V's eyes focus on Trish and go wide and surprised like he’s seeing a ghost. He’s half Dante’s age, at most, so he couldn’t have met Eva, but his is not a face of a man who’s seeing a random woman. Dante catalogues his reaction for later. Once that fucking demon king is put to his grave _again_, he'll have some questions for V. 

For now, he has to focus on his mission. While he isn’t particularly looking forward to it, going back to his hometown is necessary.

"That's impossible," Trish says. "The seal should've held for longer than that."

“That’s what I thought,” Dante agrees, “but Morrison confirms that Red Grave is on fire.”

The location just confirms V’s claims, really, even if neither woman should be aware of that.

"No worries," Dante adds after a moment. He can understand Trish's concern about having to face her former master when she’d thought him gone forever, but really, they’re both stronger than ever. "We beat him before, we'll do it again, that's it, all done, back home in time for pizza.”

“Are you sure it’s not a trap?” Lady asks.

Dante shrugs. “No, but who cares?” He gestures at Trish. “Mallet Island was a trap and we did just fine, don’t you think?”

In the corner of his eye, V flinches.

Lady doesn’t seem to notice. She just grins at Dante. “You and your plans. I’ll take my biggest gun.”

“You never leave without it,” Dante tells her, and then they set out, the three of them a well-oiled team and V tagging along . . . But Dante doesn’t mind his presence at all.

When they enter Red Grave, Dante tries not to look at streets he hasn’t seen since he was eight years old, now once again overcome with demons.

They fight their way through, and then Dante faces Mundus. He's nothing like Dante remembers him, even more inhuman in appearance, his body covered in roots or vines that Dante doesn't want to scrutinize too closely, his voice speaking in a different cadence. It doesn't matter: demons can change their form, and Dante doesn't know anyone else that powerful with a habit of calling himself a god. They fight again, only this time—this time, Dante loses.

Unconsciousness claims him, his broken sword at his side, and even as he’s sinking into darkness, there’s still a part of him wondering, _Why is his aura familiar like mine?_

(Mundus’ tricks, nothing more. Dante sleeps and sleeps and sleeps.)

***

V sees the impossible happen: Dante losing against Vergil's demon. Nero is of no help at all either, defeated as easily as V would be, had he approached his missing part any closer. V does what he's never done before and helps save the survivors as the town evacuates. There’s history in each of these fleeting human lives that he can only appreciate now, forced into the same sad, tenuous state of being as them.

There’s an older couple: a man walking on crutches and his wife who had the chance to escape, but opted to stay with him instead. _What would life be without him?_ she asks V, and V bows his head in silent understanding. He has Nightmare carry both of them out behind the perimeter line, and the woman smiles at him and says, “Your mum must be proud of you, young man.”

V heads back into the city instead of answering. His mother is dead because of his own weakness, and the other part of his being is responsible for the destruction all around them. If Dante hadn’t already been her favourite, this would’ve tipped the scales.

There’s a young girl, no older than eight years old, who V finds hiding in her room, clutching a stuffed toy now covered in blood to her chest. He coaxes her into going with him with Shadow’s help, and she rides on the panther’s back while Griffon keeps them safe.

“I was bad, mister,” she confesses as they approach the soldiers. “They took my sister and I didn't help her. I just hid.”

V breathes through a sudden pain in his chest. “You were scared,” he says. “It’s only human.”

There are others: groups of teenagers trapped in a school, families with newborns crying loudly enough to alert all the demons outside, frantic people by themselves looking desperately for their missing family members. All different, and all worth something despite their utter powerlessness.

It doesn’t escape V that a younger Vergil would've scorned him for thoughts like these.

A month later, Nero comes back at last, stronger, while V grows weaker every day. Regardless, he makes his way back inside the Qliphoth, feeling the call of the other part of his being.

He finds Dante miraculously alive, probably having only survived the encounter because he’d avoided calling Vergil's demon _Mundus _to his face. V immediately identifies what kept his fortunate little brother alive for the past month: the Qliphoth cradles him as if giving him a throne, its vines around Dante’s limbs feeding him blood and energy that by right should be Vergil’s demon’s.

Even here, even now, Dante’s still taking what belongs to Vergil.

The urge to drive the Sparda through Dante’s chest is suddenly overwhelming inside V. Not only did his brother have the gall to lose the one time V asked him for a victory, but he also stole what was not his—and, most importantly, _he didn’t remember him. _

V gets his emotions under control with a lot of effort; he used to be so composed, powerful and impressive, and it all had been ripped from him even before he’d divided himself in half. He _needs_ Dante alive now and not just to vanquish his demon, much as it pains him.

He drives the Sparda into the ground, bare millimetres from Dante’s head. Dante’s eyes shoot open: not fast enough to stop V if he’d aimed to harm him instead, but still immediately alert as a predator who senses danger all the same.

“My apologies for waking you,” V drawls, “but your job is far from done.”

Dante sits up heavily. “What day is it?”

“The 15th . . . of June.” And they’re almost out of time.

“A whole month? No wonder I’m so stiff.” Dante goes on to stretch like he’s anything but bursting with fresh power the way V _knows _him to be, after what Qliphoth’s done with him, clearly mistaking him for the brother he doesn’t fucking remember.

“Are you even aware how you survived?” V asks, completely done with Dante’s antics.

Dante shrugs languidly. “Mundus couldn’t take me out 15 years ago and he can’t do it now. Told you.”

V’s fingers tighten on his cane, a sudden regret—he _should’ve_ stabbed Dante with the Sparda, he _should’ve_ made him suffer—washing over him. When this is over, he _will_ make Dante pay.

“The Qliphoth,” V enunciates, “fed you power. Need I mention that it draws said power from human blood, _Dante_?”

There it is, a look of pure pain on Dante’s face, disgust aimed at himself rather than any demon nearby. 

_Oh, little brother, you still haven’t made your peace with being a demon? You’ve had decades._

“Well, I didn’t _ask_ it to do that, now, did I,” Dante snaps, but he’s weirdly subdued still, staring at his open palms like he barely recognises his own body.

_A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent,_ V remembers and almost chuckles at how right it is.

Dante gives him a look V can’t decipher. “Leave Nero out of this,” he says at last. “Mundus is _mine_ to kill.”

V breathes through the anger. “He did take the boy’s arm off, didn’t he?”

“For the Yamato, but you must’ve known that.” Dante’s eyes run up and down V, searching. “_Why_?”

“You don’t need me to explain that it’s an extraordinary sword.” And for some reason she was in possession of a barely adult kid who'd kept her _inside his arm_. Vergil’s relief at seeing her _whole_ had almost been eclipsed by his anger at how she was being treated. V laughs, bitter. “You’re incredibly lucky he didn’t stab you with it. The Yamato can cut through everything. Separate man from devil in your soul just as easily as it had divided the Underworld from the human realm .”

Maybe Dante would _enjoy_ it, though, the opportunity to do the opposite of what Vergil did and dispose of his demon half whose existence tortures him so.

“You sure know a lot about my father’s legacy,” Dante says, suspicious.

The singular possessive pronoun does not escape V’s attention and he wonders almost idly if maybe he should stop caring after all, support his demon half’s actions, let him destroy Dante.

(Vergil had never been truly willing to go as far as killing Dante, and the same is true for V and his demon, evidenced by the fact that Dante is still standing despite how completely overpowered he’d found himself in their last encounter, but V bursts with rage at Dante _daring_ to forget him. Not even an ancient curse would be an excuse good enough, and so far he’s still left guessing. Dante is always the lucky one and Vergil is always the one who suffers, and, for a long moment, V resents him enough to wish that it could be reversed—

But no; Dante is still his little brother.)

“I’ve done some . . . research,” V replies. _More than you have ever bothered to do_, _Dante_.

Dante studies him for a moment longer, reaching out with his demonic senses so strongly that even V can feel it, energy brushing over his skin in a vain attempt to identify him. He stands his ground, and Dante frowns.

Finally, he shakes his head. “Time to get rid of Mundus once and for all.”

He lifts the Sparda as easily as if it was made from paper when V could barely move it and turns to walk away without another word. V detests how much stronger his brother is at the moment and hates how it’s a _good thing_ under the circumstances. His help is necessary, and yet, every second when he looks at V without recognition is torment.

_Soon_. Soon it’ll be over.

***

V catches up with Dante once more, only for his brother to depart in haste, leaving him with a demon who is decidedly not his mother.

Seeing Eva's clone was deeply disturbing and he can’t say he’s grown accustomed to her. A part of him is _terrified_ at her presence; she’s a figure from his darkest moments, silently standing at Mundus’ side while he agonized Vergil over and over. Her mere _existence_ is proof of this: a perfect copy of his mother torn out of his own head, his memories given flesh in a cruel mockery of his feelings.

He never would've suspected that Dante would side with her, not considering both her creator and her looks, and another part of V is _livid_ at her. She got to live. She was the one that Dante managed to save and she’s not even _real_. A forever reminder of Vergil’s torture; something that should never have existed outside of his soul.

“I know it’s not Mundus,” the clone, Trish, says, breaking the silence between them. “He created me. I can recognise him.”

V raises an eyebrow. “Isn’t forcing his foes into the armour of an Angelo exactly what he does?”

The bitter irony of Vergil’s demon doing the same isn’t lost on him.

Trish tilts her head to the side, her eyes narrowed. “Who are _you_, then?”

She’s not Eva, and he doesn’t owe her any explanation, but . . . Faced with Dante’s continued refusal to remember him, V longs for someone who’d know him for who he is. (_Was_.)

He raises one corner of his mouth in a self-deprecating smile. “I will tell you the story of my birth.”

And so he does: no lies, no masks, just cold harsh truth, and Trish listens, never interrupting until he’s done.

"And you told him he's fighting _Mundus_," Trish says after a pause.

As if he’d had a fucking choice. "Considering how he didn't react to the truth."

"I see."

No, she doesn't; she was created to serve Mundus and had never known anything else. Vergil had had to be forced to serve. He’d been undone before he’d ever knelt. She can’t imagine what it means to have his brother refer to even a part of him with the name responsible for so much pain and anguish.

"What happened to Dante?" V asks at last quietly. He has to know, and as the man himself has no answers, only Trish can possibly tell him.

Trish regards him coldly. "You did."

V raises an eyebrow. "I rather think I would remember making my brother _forget me_." And he'd never do that to begin with. The mere idea was distasteful. "Was it some side-effect of Temen-ni-gru? There were a lot of spells at the tower, but they should have been easy enough to dispel."

There's something like pity in Trish's eyes now. "You think it was an accident?"

"I don't follow.”

"He _killed _Vergil, and it broke him." She meets his eyes with her artificially created green irises that carry none of Eva’s soul behind them. "In the end, he went looking for a memory demon. He gave his memories away—_willingly_."

It's a small mercy that V is sitting; he's sure he would've fallen down otherwise. His cane still slips from his fingers and hits the ground with a low thud. He's—shaking.

Part of it is sudden grief. A bigger part is white-hot fury.

Mundus had ripped Vergil's memories out of his very soul as he’d howled and fought him for every single one. He'd forgotten his own name before he’d forgotten _Dante_.

And Dante . . . had _wanted_ to forget Vergil? Decided he was better off not remembering Vergil and just discarded their history together? Decided to live his life as if he’d been a single child, as if his being had not always belonged to Vergil just as Vergil’s did to him? Their fate lay together, their souls two halves of one, and Dante had renounced it all? He killed him and then abandoned even the memory of Vergil?

Maybe V should've _let_ the demon destroy them all.

***

Dante can’t remember the last time he’s lost a fight. Normally he’d say it adds a bit of spice to his job, but it’s _Mundus_ he’s up against. It’s _personal_.

He doesn’t think it’s an accident that he finds a route to his childhood home hidden between the Qliphoth roots. Standing in what used to be the hallway, he looks at the portrait of his family. It’s just as he remembers it: his mother and father standing behind him, a relic of golden days that seem nothing more than a dream now, a time when Dante was happy and loved and sated with the kind of warmth that only a feeling of belonging to your family brings—

But the portrait is also _wrong_.

There is Eva, and Sparda, and Dante, just as they should be, just as Dante remembers.

And then there is another boy Dante’s age, similar to him but for his hair pushed up in a way Dante’s never worn his.

The scar on his palm itches just as the one on his sternum erupts in blinding pain. He falls to his knees, clutching at his head.

“_Vergil_,” escapes his lips, and Dante knows the name, he’s said it before, he remembers as much—a demonic tower and a thunderstorm, his clothes drenched with rain and blood, both his and—

No.

He opens his eyes to find that his nails have extended into claws, digging into his thighs. The pain clears his head moments later.

“Vergil,” V had said back then in the shop, followed by, “You know him by another name. Mundus.”

Has the demon king destroyed even this icon of Dante’s childhood? Is this his attempt to put doubt into Dante’s heart, or merely just desecrate what’s important to him, as if burning his home wasn’t enough?

Dante is going to _destroy _him. 

And to do that, he’s going to need more power.

If V is to be trusted—if the Yamato can truly separate man from devil . . . Then what about the Rebellion? There is a precedence, Dante recalls, that lays proof to his guess. A lifetime ago, when he'd been weaker and even more reckless, a mindless, nameless demon had grabbed the Rebellion and driven it through his chest. He couldn’t have foreseen the effects: Dante’s demon waking up inside him, erupting out of his skin to eviscerate his enemies.

Now, with a bitter smile, Dante takes out his broken sword. Plunges it into his stomach.

There’s a moment of pain that’s both devastating and familiar. The broken blade is still sharp enough to easily cut through his body all the way through—not surprising, what with it being one of his father’s weapons. Dante staggers a few steps back, his eyes set on the portrait hanging on the wall, looking with hatred at the child who shouldn’t be there.

_I’ll kill you_, he thinks through the agony, and the promise feels like he’s planning a calamity rather than trying to save the world.

Before he can examine those feelings, power explodes within him: pure, unadulterated power, jumping through every cell of his body like lightning, leaving him gasping as if he can’t contain all of this sudden might within him. He thinks he might be screaming or howling. His own voice doesn’t sound human, doesn’t even sound the way his demon sounds like; his body feels all wrong too, gigantic, and surely his limbs must be too heavy to move them—

It all passes in one moment of stark clarity, and then he’s strong and certain inside his own skin once more.

The Devil Sword Sparda is gone from his back. There’s a new giant broadsword in Dante’s hand, instead, whispering in his mind with a promise of more power still. _The Devil Sword Dante_, he feels more than he thinks, the name so strangely fitting that he doesn’t even consider it weird to carry a sword sharing his name. It _is_ made from his essence, too—he can sense it.

With a roar, he jumps into the air, and his new wings, faster, stronger, carry him towards where he can sense his target.

_Mundus_.

***

This time, Dante is victorious. 

He defeats Mundus without breaking a sweat, but the garbage god disappears on him before he can deliver the final blow.

_The Qliphoth is revealed in its entirety_, whatever the hell that means. Dante sighs as he follows Mundus’ aura once more through the Qliphoth’s branches.

He’s covered in blood, human more than demon, and the stench makes him sick, more so because his demon craves it. It’s not enough for the demon, clearly, that he’s tasted it already. Dante would like to repudiate V’s claim, but the truth of it courses through his veins still, an energy boost like nothing he’s ever experienced before, power liquidised running through him. _How many human lives did it take to support him for a month_, he wonders, and a bloody _empusa_ manages to score a hit on him as he shudders at his own thoughts.

Finally, he makes it to Mundus’ final location before Nero does, and he’s glad for it. The kid’s claim to revenge is valid, but Dante has more business to settle with Mundus, and he’s demon enough to growl at the thought of letting Nero help.

Without hesitating, Dante jumps into the final portal.

***

It’s his childhood home that he finds himself in front of. The illusion is perfect right down to the old tree at which they—_he_—used to play.

“What is this mockery, Mundus?” Dante growls, hatred rising in him at the abomination of a landscape around them. That Mundus eats the damn fruit is less offensive than that.

“_What_,” Mundus booms, sounding enraged of all things, as he swings at Dante, “did you call me?” 

Dante dodges it easily. “What, would you prefer, _oh, almighty demon king of the Underworld_? In your dreams.”

Mundus’s attacks are stronger this time, almost blinding power exploding out of him, but less coordinated. The world shakes around them, forced to withstand the hits that Dante evades. Mundus is just lashing out without much thought, relying on power instead of any technique as if he doesn’t actually know how to properly wield his new might. It might’ve worked to scare other demons into obedience, but it’ll never work on Dante.

He attacks back with his new sword, his demon’s power bolstered enough by his father’s to be sufficient in countering the Qliphoth’s fruit.

And Mundus falls down.

“Dante!”

He looks behind his arm to see Nero supporting V. The human, if he truly is one, is clearly dying, his skin cracking all over his body, almost too weak to stand upright on his own. 

The sight makes Dante uneasy, but he doesn’t let it show. “You’re late,” he says, faux-casual. “Just finishing up.”

V ignores him. He pushes himself off of Nero and walks past Dante, leaning heavily on his cane with each step.

“Get back, V,” Dante warns him. “Things are about to get messy.”

V doesn’t stop walking, but his quiet voice reaches Dante, his words spaced out as if he doesn’t have the breath to spare for talking. “_Please_ . . . Let me. I want to end this battle with my own hands.”

_Why_, Dante wants to demand. _How_ is it V’s battle? He’s not the one who’s lost his whole family to Mundus; he’s not the one who fought him on Mallet Island either; not the one mocked by the reminders of his childhood burning down strewn around him. And yet . . .

_He has this right. He has more right than you do_, a voice says deep in his soul.

It makes no sense. There’s no logical explanation. Dante doesn’t know him and certainly doesn’t trust him, and yet . . . He knows to trust his gut, at the very least.

He’s brought Mundus to his knees already. If V wants to deal the symbolic last stroke, then so be it.

Dante doesn’t protest, opting to merely watch V stumble towards Mundus and then climb on top of him.

V talks, but his voice is too low to carry to Dante this time; there’s just a murmur that he can’t make out, his tone worryingly familiar.

“_While thy branches mix with mine, and our roots together join_,” V intones then, louder, raising his cane.

He brings it downwards fast.

The world around them shatters and comes apart like shards of stained glass. A shockwave sends Dante flying back.

There’s only one man standing where Mundus and V were moments before, tall and white-haired, clad in a long navy blue coat.

Dante doesn’t recognise him, but even before he turns to face him, he realises one thing: _this isn’t Mundus_. The aura isn’t his, and neither is the clearly human body.

“Who the hell are you?” Dante whispers, staring, unable to look away.

The man turns, and Dante looks at his own face and his own eyes; the only difference in how his hair is pushed away from his forehead, just like that other child in the portrait.

Dante feels it deep within his very soul: the hole in his heart that he can’t remember being made is finally filled again—

By someone he doesn’t even _know_. Someone wearing an illusion, probably. Someone who can’t exist.

It’s like the world’s disappeared from under his feet and he’s falling, no one there to catch him, just a void caused by the realisation that his whole life has been fundamentally _wrong_ in a way he can't comprehend.

He still doesn’t understand.

"What is this?" Nero asks from behind Dante.

"Stay back!" Dante barks at him. This is _his_ problem to solve; it's personal, and he doesn't know how, but he knows that the answer lies deep within his soul.

“Forgotten me, have you, _Dante_?” the stranger (_not-stranger_) asks, his eyes glacial and his expression too calm, so calm that it can’t last—

And it doesn’t. He moves faster than Dante can see; one moment he’s standing thirty metres away, in the next he’s in Dante’s space, stabbing the Yamato right through his solar plexus.

Dante screams.

“Remember me now, _little brother_?” the man whispers into Dante’s ear.

He yanks the Yamato out, and Dante spits blood. His flesh starts mending almost immediately, and he falls into a fighting stance automatically and summons his sword to his side.

_This is right_, something tells him. _Fight him, so that you both find your end in each other_.

“I don’t know what game you’re playing at,” Dante growls, “but I don’t have a brother.”

It’s there and gone in a moment: a flash of pain in the other man’s eyes deeper than any wound Dante could ever deal to his body.

“I’ll make you remember,” he replies—promises, _threatens_, his voice dark with demonic undertones, danger rolling off of him in waves.

The sound of the Devil Sword Dante clashing against the Yamato reverberates through the space around them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: V kisses and sleeps with Dante, even though Dante has no idea who he is and doesn't remember Vergil. None of it is explicit as it's Teen-rated.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, I really cannot thank [vorokis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vorokis/) enough for her beta work. She's amazing.
> 
> Notice I added the "harm to children" tag: it's relevant to this chapter because we see what happened to Vergil during the attack in their childhood.

_How dare Dante not remember him? _Vergil thinks.

They’re supposed to be _one_, their lives forever intertwined, only ever complete together. Even at odds, they had always been aware that they were fighting the one person in the world who could truly understand them—and Dante had decided to throw it away?

Vergil had been so sure that Dante would remember him when he saw his true face . . . But it’s not the first time Dante hasn’t recognised him, is it? He’d killed him, the last time, and Vergil had been grateful, as with his death had come freedom.

But now he knows: Dante had spared their mother’s lookalike. Saved her, brought her to his home.

And then he chose to forget Vergil.

Vergil frowns at Dante, who’s holding his new enormous sword, and attacks.

Dante barely blocks his hit. He swings back at Vergil, but misses him completely—but _of course_. Why is Vergil surprised that his brother is not the worthy opponent he remembers him to be? Not only is he tired out from fighting Vergil’s demonic half, but he also doesn’t remember ever fighting him while Vergil knows all of Dante’s tactics and techniques.

Defeating him like this has no meaning, but then, Vergil isn’t even thinking about _defeating_ Dante anymore. He just needs him to _remember_.

When Dante slashes at him Vergil parries and sends his brother flying back without unsheathing the Yamato. He throws his summoned swords at Dante, who only dodges half of them, the others piercing through his arms and upper body. He shrugs the injuries off, but his movements grow noticeably slower.

They clash together again, exchanging more blows, before Vergil sees an opening in Dante’s guard and moves to take it—and then, a split second before the Yamato connects, he realises he’ll pierce Dante’s heart if he doesn’t change his trajectory.

With how weakened Dante already is, Vergil _can’t_ risk it.

He changes the direction of his attack, but it sends him off-balance, enough so that when Dante uses it to push him, Vergil tumbles to the ground. He moves to get up immediately, but Dante’s already swinging at him with his sword and Vergil forces himself to stay still, braced to take the hit that he can’t evade.

This attack doesn’t connect, either: Dante’s eyes widen in horror and he throws his body weight to the side to change his direction just like Vergil had moments ago, like they’re forever fated to mirror one another. He drives his sword into the ground, barely a hair-width from Vergil’s head.

It wouldn't have been a lethal blow, had Dante continued. He'd never before shied from hurting Vergil. But now he just stands over him, panting hard, staring at Vergil with a lost expression on his face.

“What have you done to me, demon?” he asks, but there’s no bite in his words, just confusion.

Vergil stands up. Dante doesn’t raise his sword again, the contrary: he lets it disappear back into the ether.

For the length of a few heartbeats, they just look at each other, their eyes identical, their blood calling to each other, and yet there is no recognition in Dante whatsoever.

“_Dante,_” Vergil says, but the sound of his own name at Vergil's lips doesn't make him react, either.

Vergil steps closer and embraces his little brother like he hadn’t done in decades in his own body. V had slept with him, but the sensory feelings weren’t the same in a human body that didn’t resonate against Dante’s in the way he’s accustomed to, so the touch still feels like a new thing altogether. Dante neither pushes him away nor embraces him back, just stands there like he doesn't know what to do. 

Vergil stays still for a moment, breathing through his own shock at having Dante in his arms again. There’s some unease—he’s not sure he’s really comfortable with this kind of prolonged touch, but it’s not important. His priority is to fix Dante.

Whatever it takes.

“What’s happening to me?” Dante asks brokenly.

“It was your choice,” Vergil answers truthfully. “Not a very good one, but that’s expected of you, little brother.”

He manoeuvres the Yamato behind Dante’s back. His brother must feel it, but he doesn’t react at all, doesn’t even tense his muscles. A foolish display of trust, that, or maybe Dante truly doesn’t care about what will happen to him next.

Vergil kisses him gently, hoping to help stir Dante's memory like that too, and then he stabs the Yamato through both their bodies, willing Dante to _feel_ their connection, to _remember them_, remember who they are, remember that they belong together and no one, not even Dante himself, can take that from them.

They were born with each other, created to remain side by side forever. Tragedies happen when they get separated: Vergil has learnt that much.

The Yamato’s power activates between them, _in them_, cutting through both their souls, and Vergil gasps as his own memories come to life in his mind. Dante’s arms tighten around him almost to the point of pain.

They fall together.

***

_Dante. He must find Dante_.

He’s the older brother. It’s his duty to keep Dante protected and away from any harm, and it’s a duty he’s currently failing at.

He’s bleeding from a dozen wounds already, but the pain is nothing compared to his fear for Dante’s safety. He can see his home burning in the distance and he’s trying to outrun the demons to reach it, but more come until he’s completely surrounded, the Yamato clutched uselessly at his side because he’s too weak to wield her.

Too weak to save Dante.

A tall, black-eyed demon tears the Yamato out of his hand. 

“Give her back!” Vergil screams in despair, hot tears prickling at his eyes. He lunges at the demon.

It obeys, in a fashion.

Vergil’s eyes open wide and blood dribbles out of his mouth as the Yamato is plunged into his stomach. He clutches at her, and he can almost feel her anguish, too, but he can’t pull her out.

He falls to his knees, and then his world explodes as something rips out of him and he becomes hatred and wrath and sorrow.

He becomes _power_.

The next moments are foggy in his mind. He is safe, too strong to be hurt, but he’s not in control of himself, not yet. His limbs are different and his body is changed, but the most terrifying part is how it doesn’t feel wrong at all; his new shape as much his own as the human body he’s used to. He moves, but he doesn't realise what it is that he does.

When he comes back to himself, the demons around him have been obliterated. He’s clutching the Yamato in his hand, and her blade is stained with black blood and demonic ichor.

Bile rises in his throat, but Vergil manages to keep it down.

The Yamato’s a soothing whisper in his mind, a calming presence among this carnage of his own making. With an oddly detached curiosity, he notes that all his wounds have healed. He’d noticed his tendency to heal fast, but those had been smaller injuries, things that he would’ve healed from anyway. They hadn’t been stab wounds right through the stomach, something that should’ve killed him in one clean strike, left him dead. 

_I should be dead_, Vergil thinks. _I should be dead_. 

It dawns on him finally—the truth behind his existence.

_I’m not human_.

(But human enough, still, that the thought he’s _not_ terrifies him.)

Vergil looks at his home. The fire seems to have burnt out, so he goes, hoping against himself that Dante’s there and _alive_.

He doesn’t find him.

He does find his mother lying in the corridor like a broken doll in a pool of blood.

He wants to approach her, but he can’t. Shame burning at him, he turns away. He goes through the rest of the house, slow, leaning against the walls when his legs shake too much to carry him, but the mansion is empty.

Dante’s gone—no, Dante’s _dead_. Vergil isn’t a child anymore. He has to face the truth. His brother, his twin, the other half of his soul is dead because of Vergil’s own inability to protect any of his family.

He runs; first away from his home, and then away from Red Grave as far away as he can. He runs until he can't anymore, and then he falls down and crawls. He blacks out, and when he wakes again, he stands back up and keeps on running. 

Days later, hungry and exhausted, he runs into a group of people. They take him in, seeing a human boy in need of help, and ask for his name.

“Vergil,” he whispers, as his name is the one thing that hasn't been burnt together with his family.

They give him food—ripe, refreshing apples and sweet rice balls. They give him fresh clothes that aren’t soiled with blood and demonic remnants, and they give him shelter in their cart. A woman in a blue robe sings him lullabies at night. They’re nothing like his mother’s, but they help him sleep all the same, even if he always wakes, screaming as he sees demons kill Dante over and over again.

“You’ll be safe here,” she whispers, gently stroking his cheek.

Two days later, demons catch up with them. The humans stand in front of Vergil and tell him to run. It’s useless. He can’t outrun the demons. He’d tried, and he’d failed.

_Help them_, he screams at the creature inside him. _Save them!_

But it hadn’t even saved Dante, it hadn’t saved Mother; how could it save strangers?

So Vergil runs again.

The demons catch up with him. One of them has blue linen poking out of its mouth.

Vergil screams, but the power within him doesn’t wake, and the demons laugh at him. They _laugh _at his weakness.

Swallowing his anger and his hatred and his fear, Vergil unsheathes the Yamato. He knows already that he’s not capable of fighting them, not yet, and he knows what he has to do. Teeth gritted, he changes his grip on the Yamato, from her hilt to her blade. His hands immediately are cut on her sharp edge, but he ignores it and holds on. In one swift strike, he stabs himself in the stomach. 

The pain is immediate and excruciating and he staggers with it, coughing blood, struggling, but with every harsh, desperate breath that shakes out of him, he wishes for more power, wishes to be set free—

When he wakes up, a similar view greets him as back in Red Grave, and he’s once again unharmed even though he’s standing in a puddle of blood.

Vergil doesn’t go back to look at what’s left of the humans who tried to help him. He doesn’t think he could stand it.

There are others, later. A group of travellers. Old farmers living in a remote house. A village full of good people.

They all die, and Vergil always runs.

Finally, he learns to say _no_ when someone offers him help. He keeps to himself. He avoids humans.

They are foolish and weak, and Vergil will not be either of those things. He’s alone now, and he can’t hope to be loved, and certainly not to be protected, but he will survive.

He’s a Son of Sparda. He will have his revenge.

***

He’s not on the run anymore.

The demons keep coming after him, since he refuses to change his name and disguise himself. He hadn’t done that as a child, and he’d survived, grown in power and now he’s all but invincible. He cuts down anyone daring to raise their hand against him, the Yamato his faithful companion. Vergil is a Son of Sparda and he won’t hide.

He researches his father and his legacy and, even after years of study, realises there’s still so much he doesn’t know about himself. So much that he knows he is capable of achieving. Eventually he’ll accomplish it all. He’ll never be powerless and at the mercy of another ever again.

On his travels, Vergil collects artifacts and amasses knowledge, pretending there isn’t a hole in his heart, empty and gaping like an unhealed wound ever since he was eight.

And then, one day, he catches sight of Dante.

He’d been so sure his brother was dead that, in the first moment, he thinks he’s looking at a demon doppelgänger, but an illusion this complete is impossible to achieve. It’s not just Dante’s looks, a perfect mirror of Vergil’s own; it’s the connection between their souls, their blood calling out to each other.

He’d lost it almost ten years ago. He'd never let himself hope he could ever regain it.

Dante’s as careless as Vergil’s childhood memories of him would suggest, but he does go by another name, at least, which explains how he’s survived until now. To approach him is a foolish decision, but Vergil does it all the same. His little brother’s mere presence is a temptation too strong after years of separation.

“_Vergil_,” Dante says like he’s trying out an almost forgotten world. “I—you’re alive.”

“Perceptive as ever,” Vergil drawls. He wants to hug Dante; a childish urge that he pushes away, and he doesn't let himself use Dante's name lest it becomes clear that he, too, hasn't spoken Dante's name out loud since the attack. The longing in Dante's voice was unmistakable, but Vergil won't be so obvious as that.

“You asshole,” Dante says. “I mourned you.”

“As I did, you,” Vergil notes. “Were I aware of your survival, I would have found you earlier.”

Dante’s the one to embrace him, at last. Vergil allows it, for a while, even brings his own arms back around his brother. Being near him again, touching him, _hugging him_—these are all the things he'd been sure were lost forever; that he'd missed like breathing. Having them again is both wondrous and unsettling, a beautiful dream that can be ripped from his hands at any moment.

He pushes Dante off and walks away; then, when Dante starts to run after him, Vergil uses his power to teleport himself away before his twin gets a stupid idea like _we’ll stay together now_. They can’t do that, not yet.

He comes back the next day anyway, a stupid risk born out of a sense of sentimentality he can’t quite uproot. Dante’s _his_; he needs him nearby now that they’ve found each other again. They fight, because they’re both demons and this is their first language, they’re fluent in it, and then Vergil leaves once more.

It’s a very human weakness that makes him stay near Dante and seek him out every night for weeks. Vergil tells himself that if he doesn’t stay more than a few hours at once, it’s okay; it’s a momentary happiness that won’t endanger his plans. That Dante’s alive doesn’t change his goals. It just means that Vergil needs to work harder than ever, especially since Dante still doesn’t know who—_what_ they are.

In the end, he leaves before he gets used to being whole again. He can’t let himself become that—he is powerful, but not yet powerful enough to be able to guarantee Dante’s safety, and losing him again would be unbearable. Until he’s unlocked all of his power, he can’t rest and he can’t stay near Dante. 

It’s not just that Dante is entirely too distracting, but also that Mundus seems to have lost track of Dante although he knows about Vergil, and Vergil could never forgive himself if his brother was attacked because of him.

Might controls everything, and without strength, he can’t protect anything. Not even Dante.

Once it’s safe for both of them to stay together, he’ll return and they’ll finally get to live their lives as one like they’ve always been meant to. 

(He ends up waking Dante’s demon for him, an act of care camouflaged as violence, and then he destroys himself with one stupid, tragic mistake.)

***

Vergil thought he knew pain. He was wrong.

A thin, black spike pierces right through his heart, pumping black, thick liquid into his veins, Mundus’ corruption trying to break him.

_He won’t let it_.

Another spike, and another, cold as ice but burning him from the inside out.

He doesn’t scream, not because he’s _stronger than that_ (he’s weak, oh so very weak), but because the pain is all-consuming and overwhelming. He can’t even open his mouth to yell; his brain can’t process anything that’s not pure, liquidised agony coursing through him.

It doesn’t last forever, though it certainly feels like it, and he can’t even bring himself to feel relief when it does end. The moment of reprieve only serves to make the next time seem worse.

Once he can control his hands again, Vergil tightens his fingers around the Yamato’s hilt. She murmurs calming reassurances at him, a promise that it’ll be all right.

_He can still fight_.

(He’s lying to himself.)

A big finger, thicker than his head, lifts his chin up. He’s helpless to stop it.

“This meagre thing?”

Mundus’ other hand reaches for him. Vergil tries to flinch back, but he can’t move—and it’s not him that Mundus aims for anyway. He takes the Yamato between two fingers like she’s a wooden stick and not a dark-forged katana capable of splitting worlds and souls.

“This,” Mundus says, “is what you’re worth,” and he _snaps_ the Yamato in half, completely effortless, like that’s something that can even be done, like he’s not destroying the very basis of Vergil’s universe.

Vergil howls.

Mundus takes one broken half of her blade and stabs it through Vergil’s chest and Vergil’s scream cuts off.

Mundus’ laugh echoes around him. “How disgraceful, Son of Sparda.” 

Vergil had thought he couldn’t be any weaker; he was wrong in that respect too. His muscles grow heavy; his hand shakes.

He drops the Yamato.

He’s lost.

***

Once more, he’s laid out across Mundus’ enormous, open palm. He’s lost count how long he's been here, insignificant against Mundus’ might. Does there even exist another state of being?

“Tell me your name,” Mundus demands like a test, but it can't be passed. There isn’t any answer he can give, there isn’t any name in his memory save one, and he knows it’s not _his_, it’s so much more important than that—

_Dante_.

He panics, tries to push it away in his mind. It’s too precious, essential to his very being, he can’t let Mundus glimpse it and—

The god chuckles. “I see you still retain part of your humanity. It’s brought you nothing but ruin. Why cling to it?”

Black tendrils of Mundus’ power surround Vergil whole, and

_No no no, he can’t, not Dante_—

—no—not—

—Dante—

—Da—

—

he—who is he—who—

he is—

is—

—undone

An infinity of darkness passes; an agony beyond anything he’s ever felt compressed into his soul.

“Tell me your name,” Mundus orders, but there is no name left in his mind, and so it falls to Mundus to give him one.

_Nelo Angelo_.

Chains form around him as the name burns itself onto his soul, constricting his arms, legs, wrapping around his neck until he can’t breathe.

“Serve me,” Mundus demands, and a heavy golden amulet is presented to him like a mark of ownership.

It's beautiful, like it doesn't fit in hell; like if he wears it, it would make him _special_, something else than a slave to his god's will.

Nelo Angelo stops fighting.

***

(_Nothing_.

There’s a black void buried deep in him like a black hole, trying to suck him in when he looks and offering nothing in return. There are no memories there, no pain, no suffering, no recollection of the agony that being buried in an armour made of Mundus’ own corrupted energy was; a blissful ignorance.

_Nothing_, and then—Dante, because Vergil will never willingly give the memories of him away.)

***

The white-haired hunter is familiar, important, safe; a memory from when Nelo Angelo had had something resembling a home—

What _is_ home, he wonders, and what a ridiculous concept, memories: he is his God’s creation and only exists to serve him, uncaring of anything else. 

But the more he attacks the hunter, the more this deep-rooted truth of his existence feels like a lie, and the amulet that falls out of the human’s shirt is the final confirmation. He can’t truly fight him, Nelo Angelo realises slowly, and oddly this realisation does not concern him at all.

He flees, and he’s sent to fight the hunter again, the order to kill him somehow a worse punishment than any physical pain Mundus can wreak upon him.

_Remember me_, he begs the hunter in his mind when he doesn’t even remember himself—who had he been, who _is_ he—but it’s in vain. For some twisted reason, Nelo Angelo cannot bring himself to harm him, but the hunter certainly can and does hurt him.

And it’s . . . Good. A clean sort of pain, nothing like Mundus’ corruption.

Every nightmare comes to an end, after all, and as Nelo Angelo falls to the hunter’s blade (long and wide and not like the sleek, honed blade that should be the only weapon to end his life), it is with gratitude.

_Dante_, he thinks before darkness engulfs him. _Dante and Vergil, and it was our mother who gave us those amulets. Mundus is a fake god; a destroyer who's ruined our family._

_Kill him, Dante._

***

For the longest time, he . . . ceases to exist. There’s _nothing_, sweet, wonderful, oh-so-safe _nothing_.

Slowly, he comes back to himself. He doesn’t know how much time had passed, he doesn’t know where in the vast realm of hell he is, he doesn’t even know how he is alive once more.

But he knows three other things: he has a brother named Dante whom he must find. His own name is Vergil. And, above all, he is _free_.

Vergil starts moving, motivated by vague, half-forgotten memories of his brother and how they promise that elusive feeling of _belonging _(the demon inside of him growls, demanding revenge: he must _defeat_ Dante). He stumbles rather than walks, easy prey in the world where strength is all that matters, but he is still a son of Sparda, so he kills the demons that attack him. 

One is strong enough to be fashioned into a Devil Arm and this is how he gains a sword to protect himself with—though it’s incomparable to the one weapon that had always been _his_, the one that had been broken because he was too weak. It seems slow and unwieldy, horribly dull, a hindrance rather than an advantage—but still better than continuing his trek bare-handed.

Stronger demons come, and more of them.

_He’s a son of Sparda_.

And he’s far from invincible. That belief had been ripped out of him along with his identity, and he may have remembered himself, but his power has sharply dwindled. He’s free, and he’s falling more and more apart, too.

He’s a son of Sparda, and that means he’s public enemy number one as long as he stays in the Underworld, so Vergil keeps walking, his thoughts a litany of Dante’s name, and he keeps losing. Pain is his constant companion, has been for longer than he can remember. His very soul is broken. He is dying again, only this time he’s alone.

_Dante. He must find Dante_.

Vergil continues.

***

He hasn’t felt sunlight on his skin in what seems like eons. He hasn’t breathed pure air in as long as that. He doesn’t know how long it has been in reality; he’d lost track of time when Mundus had first eviscerated him.

He can’t stop, however, and savour the sun on his skin or the clean air in his lungs. There’s just one goal in his mind, burning strong and miraculous across his senses: _the Yamato_, intact once more.

She’s being concealed inside someone’s arm, a sacrilegious crime, but Vergil can’t focus on dealing punishment to anyone just yet. He can barely stand straight; his vision is obscured by a hundred black spots.

He gets her back, that’s all he knows. She’s in his grasp once more, more beautiful than ever, fixed by another’s hand but still exultant to be reunited with him.

_I’m sorry I let him break you_, he thinks, but she doesn’t blame him; never has.

Her power thrumming through him, he opens a portal to go back to where it all started. Back in the house he hasn’t seen since he was eight, he doesn’t look at the family portrait that forever mocks him with everything he’s lost.

_Dante. He must find Dante_.

But he can’t do it as weak as he is, with his human flesh falling apart and his mind fractured by Mundus into too many pieces; a collection of jagged, broken edges that can never fit back together again.

Vergil knows what he has to do. His hands tighten on the hlit of the Yamato. He stabs himself with his sword.

When he’d done it as a child, it was only so that his demon would be forced to come out for a short moment, just to protect him. What he attempts now is more complicated, but it’s the Yamato: she’ll always do what he asks of her.

Pushing himself further onto her blade, Vergil lets everything that’s weak in him bleed out.

***

Weak and frail and human—Vergil is everything he’s ever hated. He’s also more himself than he’s been in a long, long time.

He doesn’t want to die, the same as when he had been eight years old and powerless against the world, and more than that, he doesn’t want countless other people to die. He doesn’t want _Dante_ to die, either.

With a bitter chuckle, he realises that what he needs is _more power_.

He finds that power bound up in his nightmares of all things, and he accepts them reluctantly in torturous contracts. He remembers what he’d meant to forget, so that he can still fight.

This time, he’ll make things right.

***

_Power. More power. Enough power to drown out the world, enough to conquer the Underworld until no one can hurt him again._

_Power to protect himself._

_And—_

Someone shoots at him.

“Jackpot,” said in a rough voice that might’ve been familiar once upon a time.

There; someone that _matters_. Disturbing him, as always, but it would be unbearable to destroy him. Human feelings are beneath him, but those feelings are more than human. The demon hiding in this man’s skin should be near his throne, sitting at his feet. They’ve been connected since birth; their blood is one and the same. The man _belongs_ to him; it’s a simple law of nature that every demon should recognise.

“_Dante_.”

***

Vergil pulls the Yamato out of their bodies, barely managing to do it in one smooth movement. His arms are shaking with the exertion, his breathing coming too fast, as if they’d been fighting for hours when that’s not the case—but what he’s just seen was more taxing than any fight could be.

He’d wanted Dante to remember him. He hadn’t meant for _himself_ to go through his own memories in a split second.

The moment Vergil lets Dante go, Dante’s knees buckle underneath him. He falls to the ground gracelessly, shivering all over, his eyes open wide and tears streaming down his face. He’s clutching at his neck in a way that’s familiar, unsettlingly so. Vergil recalls the phantom chains that had constricted his breath too many times even after he’d been killed and lived again, his hands scrabbling to get them off when they weren’t real because he’d failed at it when they had been.

“Dante?” he asks carefully.

Dante reaches for him wordlessly. His fingers feel cold in Vergil’s own.

“Do you remember me?”

He _must_. He has to now. Vergil won’t accept anything else.

Dante swallows. He closes his eyes. His forehead is covered in sweat.

Vergil has never seen him like this before. “Brother?”

“Yeah—not exactly,” Dante lets out in a rough voice. “I think . . . What I remember is _your_ life. Fuck, I—”

Understanding hits Vergil at once, and he backs off in dread, Dante’s hand slipping from his. This isn’t what he’d intended. This isn’t what he’d intended at all. Dante doesn’t deserve to go through the horrors that reside in Vergil’s own nightmares. The one comfort Vergil has ever had has been to know that Dante hadn’t suffered like him, that he’d been safe, that he hadn’t lost as much—and now, if he’s truly just experienced what Vergil had gone through, that’s no longer true. That it’s not Dante’s own pain doesn’t matter; Vergil is intimately familiar with how destructive nightmares can be.

He wonders distantly through his shock if he’ll ever _succeed_ at protecting his little brother.

Still shaking on the ground, Dante remains there. He curls up as if trying to protect himself from an unseen enemy. It’s useless. The only enemy is inside Dante’s own head.

“It’s in the past,” Vergil says, but he knows better than anyone that those words are of no comfort at all.

He’d cut his own soul in half in an effort to get rid of the nightmares, and he’d succeeded: the worst of them are gone. He’s only been back to himself for short moments, not close enough to really _understand _who he is now after being split in half and put together again, but for all the horrors that have still stayed with him, it's already obvious that there’s a certain darkness that’s lacking from his mind, the bleakest parts of his life erased. When he’d been reborn in the Underworld, he couldn’t even blink without anguish overcoming him; he remembers as much, but not the exact visions that had made him fall to his knees and try to take his own eyes out too many times.

What nightmares remain are clearly still capable of reducing Dante into _this_, though, and a certain bitterness rises in Vergil’s mind. Dante’s a sobbing mess, nothing more than prey to Vergil’s demon, and this is after he’s only seen the parts of his life that Vergil _can_ live with. Excruciating, traumatic parts, but nothing crippling anymore.

(Vergil would still cut them all out if he weren’t afraid of fracturing his soul beyond repairo, all too aware that what Mundus had done to him had been scarred onto his very being and that he will never be able to truly move on.)

But Dante—Dante can’t bear it. He’d truly been so lucky in his life, Vergil’s little brother, and a very, very small part of him delights with grim satisfaction at witnessing him broken over what happened to Vergil. Maybe this way he'll understand, at last, why Vergil always craved power.

Still, it’s too large a price to pay for that kind of understanding. A bigger part of Vergil hates what’s happened; hates both that Dante’s in pain and that he knows all the pathetic, intimate little details of Vergil’s many failures and weaknesses.

That he must’ve learnt how many times it was his own name that had kept Vergil going.

“I killed you,” Dante whispers. “I killed you, and you welcomed it.”

Vergil looks at him slowly, as if from a great distance. “And you made yourself forget, because you couldn’t live with remembering me. Was it worth it, little brother?”

Dante has no answer, sobs still racking him as Vergil’s life plays out in his mind: decades of suffering compressed and passed on to him in less than a minute. Dante's not weak for being broken. No one could withstand that.

Focused as he is on his brother, Vergil is still a predator who’d been forced into the life of prey for too long. His instincts are always alert, continuously checking the environment for any threats.

Without hesitation, his hand moves as if by itself—he unsheathes the Yamato again and swings it to press the blade gently against the boy’s—Nero, he remembers—throat, stopping him in his tracks where he was running towards Vergil with his sword in his hand. 

“What have you done to him?” Nero growls.

Even if he were inclined to respond, Vergil doesn't have any answer. _What indeed_, he wonders, as his brother who doesn't know him anymore falls apart at his feet.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for how long this took. The plan is to finish it still this year though.
> 
> As usual, big thanks for betaing and generally being the best to [vorokis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vorokis/)!

There’s nothing but pain, darkness, and screams in Dante’s head. Not his own: he doesn’t think he’s ever screamed like that. His own being has never been shredded until there was nothing of him left, redone into a mockery of the person he’d used to be—

Chains; chains on his neck, constricting his breathing; chains under his skin, forcing him to obey—

_It’s in the past_, Vergil said, except it’s really not, and Dante’s reeling, the pain he’d witnessed almost too much to bear, the revelation that he had—has—a brother its own blade piercing his heart.

He doesn’t remember him, even if he knows now that Vergil spoke the truth when he called him _little brother_.

A clang of blades clashing against each other penetrates through his thoughts. It’s not a memory or a nightmare, because he—_Vergil_—lacked the Yamato for the majority of those. But Dante’s definitely hearing a sword fight, so he forces all the horrors aside just for a moment, just so that he can stand up and see what’s going on, protect himself if necessary. His demon whines deep in his soul, as terrified by that glimpse into Vergil’s past as his human part, but Dante manages to prop himself up with his sword and look around.

Vergil’s trading blows with Nero. Playing with him, Dante sees immediately, blocking or dodging Nero’s hits all too easily, never launching a serious attack of his own. Unusual, for the man Dante had seen, but then, he was V, too, and Nero had helped him. Dante’s really doubting that Vergil’s goodwill will last for a long time, though.

“Nero,” he calls, surprised at his own voice: smooth, not rasping, even though a part of his brain is still convinced he’d screamed himself hoarse until he couldn’t make a sound anymore. “Stand down.”

But Nero’s only barely more than a hot-headed teenager these days, so of course he doesn’t heed the warning in Dante’s voice. Dante wants to jump into action, block Vergil’s hit, but he’s still dizzy. He takes a step and has to fight to keep nausea down, only able to watch as Vergil cuts Nero down, kicks his legs from under him—and sheathes the Yamato.

_What_?

He moves to Dante’s side in a flash of blue and scans his face intently. Dante can’t tell what answer he’s looking for; can’t give him anything but a tired, fake smile.

He doesn’t know this man (_his life belongs to him_), and yet he knows the depths of Vergil’s love for him (_a heart of darkness, and nothing but Dante’s own name in it, until even that was gone, and Vergil was no more_). He wonders if this love was requited, is rather sure that yes, it was, and that’s why he can’t remember him. Vergil’s life is a story of loss, and Dante has never been any good at handling grief.

“I’m sorry I can’t remember,” he lets out.

Vergil’s expression grows cold. “Don’t lie to me, Dante.” He speaks Dante’s name like no one else in the world: a caress, a curse, a prized possession, an unattainable goal. “You _chose to_ forget. You did it willingly. You’re not _sorry_; you’re _scared_.”

“Scared?” Dante repeats incredulously. “I knew something was wrong—” _Like his heart being cut out of his chest_, he almost says, but Vergil has a very intimate understanding of what _that_ feels like—literally.

“Dante, what the hell?” Nero must’ve picked himself up, because he’s walking in their direction now, but he’s not attacking again. “Where’s Mundus, what—”

Vergil’s close enough that Dante can hear his breath catch, can see how his knuckles go white where he’s holding the Yamato tight.

There are things Dante should say. Apologies, maybe, and quiet confessions, some proof of understanding. Not with Nero there, though. Not with any witnesses.

He exhales slowly. “Yeah, so. Turns out I have a brother. Cool, no?”

Nero looks at him with an expression that’s absolutely lost. Dante can relate.

“_Brother_?” Nero repeats. “And the demon, the Qliphoth? _My arm_? We’re just ignoring that now?”

“I—”

“The Qliphoth must be cut down,” Vergil says over him with a voice utterly devoid of any emotions. “It cannot be done from the human realm.”

Dante stares at him, because he cannot be saying what it sounds like he’s saying. 

He’d spent over _twenty years_ in hell, every day of it horrific. Dante can’t imagine choosing to go back down there willingly, and yet . . . 

And why would _Vergil_ talk of cutting the tree down? It serves _him_, after all, and Dante remembers his plans, the current ones and the past; the truth behind the Temen-Ni-Gru. All that Vergil was willing to throw away. (All that he would have protected with his life, that he’d lost anyway, that was torn from him.)

V, lying and manipulative, desperate and dying, hadn’t just waited to reunite with his other half. He’d saved people, too.

Dante’s seen Vergil’s life, yes, but he doesn’t know him and he shouldn’t let himself believe that he does, not even for a moment.

“There you go, Nero,” he says with cheer he doesn’t feel at all. “We’ll take care of the Qliphoth and you can finish any of the remaining demons. A win-win situation.”

Vergil glances at him sideways, but doesn’t protest Dante’s declaration.

Nero does, loudly so.

Dante understands the kid’s reaction, he does, but he’s upright thanks to his willpower only and he’s still seeing reminders of unspeakable horrors each time he blinks.

(How’s Vergil even _standing_?)

“Nero,” Dante says, solemn and grave enough that Nero goes abruptly silent. “I think I gotta do this.” And he doesn’t need Nero’s permission or acceptance, really, but . . . In a way it’s his fault that Nero had lost his arm; he’d given the boy the Yamato, unaware that she wasn’t his to give away—only she had seemed to work with him better than with Dante, so it had made sense at the time.

Dante blinks. Another memory surfaces in his mind: a woman clad in red, Vergil going through Fortuna’s libraries—

He blinks again. Looks between his—his brother and his _nephew_ and keeps his mouth firmly shut. This is not the way for either of them to learn the truth, and honestly, maybe there never will be the right way, especially for Nero. He’s a good kid underneath all his bravado. He doesn’t deserve to be pulled into their family mess, even if Dante currently remembers only half of it, and not even _his_ half.

“I can handle it. You don’t have to go,” Vergil says quietly when Dante turns to him once more.

But Dante _does_.

He does have to go because he’s pretty sure that, somewhere in hell, there lies an answer to his missing memories. And with Vergil at his side—Dante _needs_ to learn it all. Needs to remember his twin brother, put the mismatched pieces of his life back in order. Understand what’s become of his own life, and why.

“Let’s go,” he says, and he doesn’t wait for either of them to answer, just heads to the edge of the Qliphoth and jumps off, lets himself fall.

(The other reason for why he has to go, the true one, too important to put into words and so obvious in his-not-his memories of what happened to Vergil. He doesn’t remember what Vergil truly means to him, but he knows this much: he’ll never let him fall alone again. He can’t.)

***

His little brother makes no sense.

Vergil catches up with him short moments after Dante’s landed at the Qliphoth’s roots and is already slashing his way through all the lesser demons with his giant sword. He acknowledges Vergil’s presence by throwing a demon his way that Vergil neatly slices in two, but he doesn’t say anything.

Dante shouldn’t even be there. Vergil doesn’t need help with felling the Qliphoth; he has the world’s sharpest blade, after all. Moreover, he’s eaten the Qliphoth’s fruit and he’s stronger than ever. Dante has to know it, and yet, there he is, like it’s his responsibility when he’s done his best to make everything related to Vergil _not_ his business.

Vergil easily takes down whatever demon crosses his path, watching Dante from the corner of his eye. Dante’s putting himself into the easy fight with complete abandon, like bathing in demon blood is all he wants to do. He’s not his usual self, though: still lethal, still strong, but his reflexes are off. More than once, he doesn’t avoid a hit in time. None of the injuries are dangerous and all of them heal almost immediately, but it’s unlike Dante.

And Vergil knows why that is. He caused it, after all.

He lets his demon out, bright blue energy erupting around him, and he zips around the battlefield, lightning fast, taking out the demons surrounding him before moving onto the ones Dante’s fighting and dispatching of them too, until all that’s left around them are the Qliphoth roots still attacking wildly everything in their reach and the main trunk of the demonic tree in front of them.

“Not cool,” Dante comments, but it’s strained and he doesn’t even try to attack Vergil for taking his fun.

There’s a lot Vergil wants to say. He can’t find the words for any of it. He hasn’t seen Dante in over two decades, and what little he’d observed of him as V isn’t enough. Still, he knows that Dante isn’t doing well. It’s stolen memories he saw, but it’s clearly affecting him, and Vergil couldn’t have just stood there and waited until some demon managed to _really_ hurt him.

He can’t say that, though. He can’t say anything that would matter.

So, instead, he says, “Let’s take the Qliphoth down, Dante. Then I’ll close the portal.”

It would take one just slice of the Yamato imbued with enough of his power, but he lets Dante hack at the tree instead. He stands back and dispatches of any new demons appearing near them—less than earlier, and lesser still with each passing moment. Eventually, there’s nothing but the sound of Dante’s sword striking the Qliphoth over and over again. Were it a real tree, it would be leaning to the side dangerously already, but that’s not a risk here. It’ll keep standing for as long as even a part of it is connected to its root; once that connection is completely severed, it’ll just . . . disappear.

Here, at least. The human world might not be that lucky, and Vergil can only hope that Nero’s enough to handle it on the other side. It’s a curious sensation, this freshly-acquired worry about humans—worry, and something like admiration, too. V wasn’t _weak_, no matter what he or his demon thought at the time. His mother—

Vergil tightens his grip on the Yamato. Wishes for a new demon to appear. No such luck; instead Dante cuts one last time, and then the Qliphoth is gone. Vergil both sees it, right in front of himself, and _feels it_, the feeble connection he’d had with the tree suddenly snapped. It’s not something he’s going to miss, however, and their job isn’t quite done yet anyway. The portal to the human world is still open and Vergil can’t let that continue.

He tends to use the Yamato to open short-lived portals rather than to seal anything, but he knows how to do it, of course. He’d spent all of his youth researching his father’s legacy and his own power. He focuses on the portal now, high above them but still easily detected; a gaping wound in the fabric of reality still pulsing with power. He grips the Yamato securely and sends his own energy down her blade until she’s shining with it, sapphire and beautiful. He points her at the portal before making a cutting motion, slicing along the mouth of the gate, feeding it enough energy to pull its edges together, close and closer still until they connect.

The passageway seals shut, and Vergil sheathes the Yamato.

He exhales and inhales in a controlled manner. The energy cost of what he’s done isn’t low, and he’s tired, but the Underworld’s atmosphere, now pure again without the human realm’s influence, supports all demons—and he’s enough of one to be grateful for it. If he doesn’t need to fight soon, just being here will replenish his energy enough to keep him awake. It’s not ideal, settling for staying awake instead of resting, but he can’t imagine sleeping in these conditions anyway (or any conditions, if he’s honest with himself, his nightmares just waiting for him to close his eyes).

“So . . .” Dante says. “You closed the portal. What now?” 

Vergil raises an eyebrow. “I didn’t tell you to come here, brother. What did you plan for, exactly?”

Dante shrugs. “Didn’t seem like a good sibling thing to do to leave all the work to you.”

“_Good sibling thing_?” Vergil says caustically, snarling. “You don’t even remember me. You could’ve stayed. Lived your life with humans. Isn’t that what you wanted when you got rid of your memories?” 

He can’t help it; the awareness that Dante chose to forget him still _hurts_ like no physical wound Dante’s ever given him. _I don’t need you_, Vergil tries to say, but he’s bad at lying to himself; he knows the falsehood would be obvious if he uttered the words and he can’t let Dante witness it.

“Yeah. About that.” Dante takes a deep breath. “I want to get my memories back.”

A spasm of surprise goes through Vergil and leaves him unsure of how to react.

He _wants_ Dante to remember, of course he does; he’d run them both through with the Yamato for the chance to make Dante remember. He didn’t expect that Dante would make this decision for himself, though. Not after he’d decided to forget him in the first place.

“Why?” Vergil asks, raising an eyebrow. “Feeling guilty?”

Dante shrugs with one arm. “Seems I lost quite a big part of myself, haven't I?”

“_Lost_ suggests it wasn't by your choice, Dante,” Vergil says with an edge to his voice. 

“Yeah, well, clearly I didn't think it all the way through.” Dante sounds annoyed.

“You rarely think anything through, Dante, but I don't see you asking a demon for help lightly. You always so abhorred them.”

“What's the interrogation even about, Vergil?” Dante asks suddenly. “Do you _not_ want me to get my memories back? You were pretty set on trying to make me remember moments ago.”

_I don't want you to remember and wish you hadn't. _

But that's not something he can tell Dante. And since his twin seems to have made up his mind . . . 

“Very well, then,” Vergil says. “No memory demon deserves to take a Son of Sparda’s memories anyway.”

(As if there even existed a possibility of him leaving his little brother to fend for himself against all of Hell alone.)

“Memory demon?” Dante replies.

Vergil glances at him sideways. “You—” But if Dante had remembered even that much, he surely would’ve found a way to go back to hell and find answers, wouldn’t he have? The trick was in Dante not realising he’d forgotten his life. “That’s what Trish told me you did. Found a demon that feeds on strong memories and gave it yours.”

Dante winces. “Let’s find it and have a _talk_, then.”

He does seem completely sure that that’s what he wants to do, and Vergil’s glad for that. He’s not sure how he’d react to Dante changing his mind now.

“They’re a rare breed. I have a guess where you might’ve encountered one, however.” 

With that, Vergil starts walking, Dante following him.

Hell is a plain here, surprisingly empty save for some demonic plants, but then most of the nearby demons would’ve crossed the portal or died at the Qliphoth roots. 

Vergil and Dante move fast, without speaking. Vergil’s never been one for small talk, and Dante . . . He’s nothing like the teenager Vergil remembers, ready to babble inanities at all times.

“How,” Dante says at last, a single word, a question Vergil could easily evade because there's nothing around them that Dante can truly mean, and therefore it could be anything.

But Dante still shakes when he thinks Vergil doesn't look. 

Vergil doesn't know how to offer comfort, so he gives his little brother a gentle lie instead: “The memories aren't fresh. I've had years to move on.” And years to experience the pain, too, not just one horrible minute of witnessing all of the humiliations that had befallen him.

“Bullshit,” Dante spits. “I've seen inside your head—”

“Then why are we talking about it?” Vergil cuts him off. “You've got a second-hand experience of my life and you think you understand me?”

“You didn't _have_—”

Vergil runs the Yamato through Dante’s chest in one smooth move. It’s an emotional reaction he hates in himself, but Dante _knowing_ all that is too much.

Dante coughs, bloody, and he still _keeps talking_, finishing the sentence, “—a life.”

Vergil wants to twist the blade and make Dante hurt for daring to do this, for seeing what he’s seen, for realising just how broken Vergil had become. Instead, he breathes in and out and tells himself to be calm. It’s his fault Dante's seen everything, after all.

“The memories you saw, Dante. They're the good ones. I forgot the rest.” He yanks his sword out. “But you already knew that. I can't help you deal, little brother.” _I've never meant to hurt you like this, but it's my life you saw. Why do you ask me to support you?_

He pushes the thought aside. He _is_ Dante’s older brother. It’s his duty, and one he’s seriously failing at, to keep Dante safe. But there is a part of him that’s bitter, the part that remembers his own flesh torn to shreds over and over again, the part that’s terrified of what he _doesn’t_ remember, horrified at the scars that he doesn’t have, and wonders how Dante can expect guidance from him.

Dante wipes at his bloody mouth. “And you blame me for forgetting, too.”

“I’ve never forgotten _you_,” Vergil snaps, “and you seem to want those memories back, so is this really an argument you want to use, _brother_?”

He half-expects Dante to attack him in reply, and it’d suit him just fine, but Dante doesn’t. He merely looks away, and, after a moment, gestures forward. “Shall we go, then?” he asks quietly.

Vergil frowns at his reaction, but elects to listen. Maybe Dante will start making some sense once he remembers his own life, so they shouldn’t waste any time in getting to the demon.

***

As they wander, Dante watches Vergil. Tall and muscular, Vergil is his mirror reflection and yet so very different, calm and collected on the surface but hiding in his soul a dark, raging thunderstorm capable of ruining the world. He’s elegant, lethal, just like the Yamato, which he wields as if she’s an extension of his arm. It’s just one more proof that the memories Dante has seen are true. No wonder she hated him wielding her in Fortuna.

Vergil’s step is sure and measured. He walks through hell like everything is fine; like he hadn’t spent twenty horrific years here; like the landscape isn’t a constant reminder of all that’s happened to him.

Dante himself remembers nothing from his apparent trip to hell, but Vergil does seem to know the general direction they should head in, just like he said. Which means Dante should know, too, except that would mean actually combing through all of Vergil’s memories pushed into his head, and yeah, he’s not doing that. The air down here might be strangely invigorating, but Dante’s still almost light-headed with everything he’s been forced to witness.

He wants to blame Vergil. He wants to _hate _him, really, for so many things: inflicting his terrible past upon Dante, throwing his life upside down when he’d been . . . Not happy, because something _had _been missing, but. Dealing, at least. For raising the Temen-Ni-Gru and for the Qliphoth and all the innocent lives he’d taken.

And yet, he can’t bring himself to hate his brother. He can’t fault him for what he’d done. Not when, seeing into his head, Dante _understood_ (and isn’t it a terrifying concept all on its own, understanding Vergil?).

Not when Dante’s somehow feeling _whole_ again.

They walk in silence, save for Vergil’s quiet warnings from time to time—_don’t step on this plant_ or _hold your breath_ when they pass near some trees (regular-sized and probably not feeding on human blood, considering Dante doesn’t see any portal nearby; apparently still dangerous because, well, _hell_). They kill demons that are stupid enough to attack them, Vergil usually dispatching of them, fast and deadly, before Dante even has a chance to help, and each time, Dante has to push down the memories of when Vergil _wasn’t_. Of when he was forced into hiding, unable to defend himself, barely surviving for years until he escaped hell.

Dante doesn’t say it.

He also doesn’t say that Vergil’s apparent calm is almost creepy—but admirable, too, in a way; Dante can’t imagine the extent of Vergil’s strength, obvious in the mere fact that he’s come to the Underworld again.

Said calm is broken, though, when they cross a river—walking over an actual stone bridge; Dante’s not sure what to expect from hell’s architecture but it surprises him in how mundane it is—and Vergil stops dead in his tracks before a gate raised just beyond the bridge. He seemingly doesn’t even breathe, his face growing several shades paler.

“What’s—” And then Dante sees it: carved on the top of the gate are three orbs.

A cold, instinctual fear washes over him—he _defeated _Mundus, he remembers that much, but he also remembers Mundus taking him apart slowly and meticulously until nothing was left, and then doing it all over again.

Next to him, Vergil’s eyes glow glacial blue, but he doesn’t let his demon out. He unsheathes the Yamato in a long, controlled movement; proceeds to slash the gate to pieces faster than the eye can see.

The gate falls down with a deafening thud.

Vergil doesn’t look at Dante as he walks around the rubble and continues down the path, his head raised and his back straight like nothing even happened. Dante follows him, of course he does, but now there’s another horror he remembers as he catches up with Vergil, this time all his own.

“I called you—” Dante stops. Swallows. Can’t force himself to speak the name again. Not after—

Next to him, Vergil’s knuckles are white where he holds the Yamato tightly, a crack in his mask. “I was the one to tell you that,” he says in an empty voice.

He was. And now Dante knows _exactly_ how much it had cost him to do that.

“Why,” he whispers.

“You know why.” Vergil’s voice is cutting. “Let’s not act like you don’t know _everything_ about me, brother.”

“I didn’t ask for that,” Dante reminds him.

“No, you asked to forget I ever existed, _I am aware_.”

Dante has no reply to that. He can’t explain his motivation, even if he has a pretty good guess. (_A long sword piercing the black armour and the relief coming from nonexistence_; but Dante knows, he _knows_ relief would’ve been the last thing he himself would’ve felt when he’d realised what he’d done. Who he’d killed.) He probably wouldn’t explain it even if he could, though. Saying _yeah, haha, so I think I couldn’t live with you dead_ isn’t an option. It’d make him too vulnerable in Vergil’s eyes.

Just the way Vergil must feel right now, with his thoughts and memories bared.

“Yeah, well,” Dante says finally. “We’re fixing that, aren’t we?”

Vergil just walks faster, and Dante lets him have that, staying a few steps behind him if an illusion of solitude is what Vergil wants right now.

Maybe once he gets his memories back, he’ll know how to talk to his brother, too.

***

They walk for days, Vergil’s limbs growing weary, not even the atmosphere of the Underworld enough to fend it off completely. Dante’s similarly affected, he can tell, but his little brother doesn’t ask for a break, and so Vergil doesn’t stop. The few times they’d paused didn’t really help much so far, and the sooner they get to the demon, the better.

They’re passing through a shallow stream of black water that barely reaches their calves when Dante stumbles as they’re stepping out of it. Vergil steadies him automatically, only for Dante to recoil from his touch.

It takes his brother a few seconds to reorient himself, and then Dante winces. “Sorry.” He hesitates. “Uh. Are you okay?”

Vergil grits his jaw. Dante keeps doing this; keeps stopping in terror at some half-formed memory and immediately glancing back at Vergil with distress clear on his face. Vergil's had _enough_. He doesn’t even know what Dante’s remembered now—_the Yamato broken and falling into black waves under him_—and Vergil is _not_ thinking of it, not remembering it, he is fine and the Yamato is safe at his side. He doesn’t need his brother’s _sympathy_.

“Fight me, Dante,” he says in a deceptively gentle, calm voice, like a part of him doesn't want to rip his brother apart with tooth and claw to prove he's not some fragile creature in need of protection.

Dante doesn't react.

He manages to move fast enough that the Yamato only nicks his arm when Vergil attacks, but he doesn't even draw his own blade. A final insult.

Vergil snarls. In a split second, he has Dante pinned to the ground with the Yamato mere centimetres from his lung, his clawed hand tilting Dante's head up so that his neck is uncovered and unprotected; a way to make any demon react, only Dante still doesn’t try to force him off. 

Vergil leans over him and whispers into his ear, “Do you think I'm weak?”

“No.” Dante's reply is immediate and heated, like his every action doesn't show it to be the lie it is.

“You can't break me, brother.”

(Mundus already did. But Dante knows it, and that's the problem.)

“I'm not human, and I'm not a victim,” Vergil continues.

(But he was; too human to protect himself from becoming prey.)

His breath ghosts over Dante's pulse point. His teeth grow longer. If Dante won’t defend himself, Vergil will make him regret that.

But Dante, at last, explodes in a whirlwind of crimson energy, beautiful and horrible in equal measures.

Vergil grins at that, aware his teeth are still more demon than human, and then he lets his demon come fully out to meet Dante’s.

They clash, and it’s glorious, the way they’re meant to be, untamed and formidable, unmatched by anyone in this realm or the human one. There’s something exhilarating about fighting his brother like this, without the intention to hurt him. It’s just them and their demons let loose, and the violence singing in their blood that feels nothing short of ecstatic.

Dante doesn’t hold back—no more than Vergil does, at least, just so that they don’t truly harm each other—and it’s almost a good sensation to feel Dante’s sword cutting through his flesh instead of having to hear Dante’s overly careful words.

It might not be a _serious_ fight, but Vergil doesn’t intend to let Dante win, either, counterattacking quick and sure. Dante might know his moves again now, but he never could match Vergil for speed. Still, his brother _is_ strong. They fight for what feels like hours, unconcerned with anything but them.

It ends with Vergil running the Yamato through Dante’s stomach, his hand on Dante’s shoulder.

“I win,” he tells him, and Dante laughs, bloody and beautiful, and nods in concession.

Vergil yanks his blade out, sheathing it, and they both shift to fully human again, their wounds rapidly healing even as exhaustion settles deeper into their bones.

Dante yawns, but his yawn is interrupted by a wince, his hand going to rub at his stomach. “Point taken,” he says.

It had better be, Vergil thinks. Tiredly, he says, “Rest, brother,” and is still surprised when Dante actually _does_, making himself comfortable on the ground. Maybe having had insight into Vergil’s thoughts gives him the comfort of knowing Vergil won’t kill him in his sleep; maybe he just is too tired. Vergil wouldn’t blame him. He’s awake by willpower only—willpower and his demon growling in his soul that _resting isn’t safe._ Not next to Dante.

Dante clearly doesn’t have such a problem. He falls asleep fast, his breathing slow and even, and once Vergil is sure he won’t wake him, he softly steps over to his brother and puts his coat over him. The Underworld is neither cold nor warm, but Dante had always slept better under covers. Back in their childhood, he’d wrapped himself in blankets even on the hottest summer nights, a fact Vergil had protested every time since Dante invariably ended up crossing the room to climb into his bed, bringing the blankets with.

It’s not a sour memory, though, moreso the opposite, and it surprises Vergil every time he discovers he still possesses pleasant memories of their past.

Choosing a space safe distance away from Dante, Vergil sits and waits for his brother to wake. The Yamato is resting in his lap and he keeps his hands on her sheath, a comforting, grounding touch, reminding him that he might be back in the Underworld, but it's nothing like the twenty years of torture and defeats he'd passed here. He's stronger now and reunited with his weapon. He'll never be as defenceless as back then.

Watching as Dante twitches through his sleep, his breathing picking up, Vergil isn't surprised. He'd been expecting it. Dante was never going not to have nightmares troubling his rest after seeing Vergil’s life.

The good thing to do would be to wake him. Only dark despair and pain will be waiting for Dante now every time he closes his eyes.

Vergil doesn't move.

He _doesn't_ want Dante to suffer, but he also doesn't want to see the pity in his eyes that would surely be there once Dante realises he's safe and his dreams were truly Vergil’s.

A pained noise escapes Dante’s lips, and for a moment Vergil hopes Dante will wake on his own, but it seems like he’s too deep in his sleep, the nightmares unwilling to let him go. Slowly, Vergil stands; slower still, he walks to Dante’s side and kneels next to him.

He touches his arm. “Dante.”

He’s prepared to defend himself from any blow Dante might deal, woken suddenly like that, but none come. Instead, his brother opens his eyes, and stays frozen under Vergil’s touch, horror written on his face.

“You’re safe, brother,” Vergil tells him.

_And so am I_. _This won’t ever happen again_.

It would be easier to remember that if his brother didn’t remind him of what darkness dwells in his mind at all turns.

Vergil moves to withdraw his hand, but Dante catches his wrist and holds on like Vergil being there is somehow comforting—an impossible concept. Patiently, Vergil waits until Dante’s breathing calms down again and he slowly lets him go.

Sitting up, Dante blinks, looking down at himself in surprise.

Vergil refuses to comment as he takes his coat back from Dante, but his brother smiles at him all the same, looking actually happy for once.

Vergil tries not to stare. He can’t remember the last time Dante had smiled at him like that. 

“Thanks,” Dante says. “Is it far still to where we need to go?”

“A few days, I’d wager,” Vergil says. “Provided the demon resides where I believe.”

“Let’s hope so, then.”

Vergil meant to start moving, get on the road and stop wasting time, but Dante's still smiling at him, his face devoid of any worries, and a part of Vergil thinks, _I always want to see him like that_.

It's a dangerous thought. 

“What?” Dante asks. 

Vergil shakes his head. “No, nothing.”

Dante raises an eyebrow. “Maybe you should get some rest too.”

Dante's right. Vergil _should_ rest, but even Dante's smile isn't enough to convince him it's safe, and anyway, he has a lot of experience keeping himself awake in the Underworld against exhaustion.

They move forward.

***

Dante’s been here before.

He doesn’t know how he knows that, because the place isn’t familiar at all: a mountainous terrain devoid of what little vegetation is present in other parts of hell, dark and gloomy. There are no demons there that he can sense—but he’s definitely been here before; he can feel it, which means Vergil’s idea of where to look for a memory demon was right and _that _means there _is_ a demon somewhere nearby.

“Dante?” Vergil asks him quietly.

“It’s here,” Dante confirms in a rough voice. He looks around, overtakes Vergil and lets his demonic senses spread wide.

_There._ A weak flickering of an aura. Dante all but runs towards it. It’s not like he needs to be scared of walking into a trap.

He runs, and then he comes to a sharp stop when he sees a man facing away.

“I thought our business was concluded, Son of Sparda.” 

The man turns, and he looks like Vergil, if Vergil were still nineteen years old, and Dante’s breath catches. It’s unsettling; something that Dante knows was taken from his own head.

(But he’d given him his permission to do it, hadn’t he? Not like Vergil, who’d fought, screaming and begging, as Mundus just took what had been only Vergil’s.)

“What could bring you back here? More horrors—”

Vergil, suddenly appearing at the demon’s side, raises his head with the tip of the Yamato. 

The demon's eyes widen in surprise and confusion in a very not Vergil-like way. “Oh—it's _you_—”

Vergil's tone is nothing short of murderous as he demands, “Your natural shape, please.”

The demon wisely doesn’t try to fight. He radiates pure fear as he morphs into a shapeless blob, and Vergil immediately summons his spectral swords to surround it. He raises one eyebrow at Dante as if to tell him, _Your part now_.

Final decision time, then, only Dante didn’t come this far to back off now.

He takes a breath, squares his shoulders, and says, “I want my memories back.”

**Author's Note:**

> This fic also has a [twitter post](https://twitter.com/tonytears/status/1201247353786818572) :)


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